[untog]

I think that just speaks to the way Mastodon encourages people to form smaller communities. The idea is that you'd trust your admins.

A more apt comparison than Gmail/Hotmail would be if one of the e-mail providers was whitesupremacy.net. Or, we-allow-white-supremacy.net. The admin of my we-dont-like-white-supremacy.net e-mail provider might choose to block it, based on the content it sends out. Anyone on that provider is welcome to choose another one if they wish to e-mail me. But if it is important enough to them to stay where they are, then they will remain blocked.

Long story short, if you don't trust the admin, don't sign up for the Mastodon instance. I agree that there needs to be some work on porting accounts from one instance to another seamlessly, though.

[thevtm]

Even in that case I believe it should be the user choice not the admin.

And communities should be instance independent the same way mailing list works.

[egypturnash]

FWIW, one of the things 2.0 added is the ability for users to block entire instances. So you could find/run an instance that chose to block absolutely nothing and let you handle all of this.

[untog]

The straightforward answer there is to join a Mastodon instance where the admin pledges to never block another instance.