I hear ya. I don't know the first thing about what goes into running a big instance like that, so I'm willing to keep an open mind. But I really like this instance for its open approach. It fits with my understanding of how the fediverse would work, especially when some of the bigger instances were (at least initially) encouraging people to not all sign up on the same instance to balance the load of new users. By defederating, it kind of negates that aspect. People are going to need to sign up on multiple instances or just go straight to the big ones to ensure access to those communities.
But with everything being so new, I get it. It'll be interesting to see how things evolve as the fediverse grows/ages. I do hope the block list gets reconsidered soon enough though.
+1 for the jerboa app. I'm finding myself searching around and engaging on the fediverse a lot more now because of it.
95% of the time I spent on reddit was through the Relay app. Jerboa has definitely filled that void for me on the fediverse.
That's a bummer. I get it (somewhat), but I'm not really fan of that type of gatekeeping by beehaw. On the positive side, it makes me really appreciate this instance/community and makes me want to interact more on here instead. So I'm looking forward to that.