@tchambers It is of course your choice what policy you implement on your instance, but I see one big issue in that rationale:

Consent is something that can only ever be given by the person affected, to the degree that they are comfortable in giving it. It cannot be extrapolated from consent given for something kinda sorta similar.

The consent to federate, for instance, is given for a very specific subset of systems (other AP implementations) in a very specific cultural context with very specific expectations. You do not need to understand or agree with those constraints; that simply is the extent of the consent that was given.

You cannot then take something that is not an AP instance, go "this is kind of the same, so therefore I will interpret you as having consented, even though you haven't and you're actively objecting". That is a consent violation, and this sort of 'creative reinterpretation' of consent is very much a big part of the rape culture problem.

There may well be very good reasons that people consent to AP federation but not to BlueSky bridging. You may not be aware of those reasons, you may be aware but disagree with them, it doesn't matter - those are the boundaries that some people have set, and that's the end of that conversation.

To reiterate, what policy you implement on your own instance is your own choice, but I think you should be a lot more careful about the implications of what you say regarding *other* people's choices, even (or especially) if you know Ryan personally.

(Yes, I am aware that the post also says "there may be legitimate reasons to block them". But it still tries to extrapolate consent, instead of acknowledging that people's 'correctness' fundamentally does not matter here.)