I kinda wonder why Mastodon doesn't let you 'override' an instance block on a per-user level with explicit communication? So they still wouldn't appear in the federated timeline, but at least you can follow/message them directly. Seems like an obvious mitigation to the "instance admin wars" problem...
@f0x Hmm. What would be the reason to suspend rather than silence, then?
fuchsiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
@joepie91 a silence might hide things from view but will still happily federate out all the posts, showing them to the toxic instance + letting them reply (although you won't see the reply directly). so we opt for suspend on all the harmful instances
@f0x Ah, hrm. Isn't it possible to federate a message as 'unlisted', causing the other instance not to show it to other users? Because it's kinda annoying to not be able to contact known-good users who happen to be on eg. poorly-moderated servers
@joepie91 that's possible when it's just an instance silence instead of a suspend, suspend means no data is ever processed