@polyfloyd @scarnecchia Because unlike something like Matrix (which is fairly point-to-point), fedi is far more community-based. That means that for example, toots from federating instances will make it onto the federated timeline and into the hashtag search, even if they are not directly sent *to* you.

Likewise, federating means that your conversations are accessible to people on the instances you are federating with. When an instance shows disregard for community norms, there's good reason to expect that they will also do so in other ways that don't necessarily involve tooting at users (see eg. the scraping nonsense).

Fedi as we know it today is primarily built and for marginalized and vulnerable folks, and that means that unlike with most platforms, chances are generally not taken with moderation here. It's just not worth the risk.