Does someone have / know of a good guide on federation and specifically (this is the only bit I'm interested in) how the 'silence' domain 'block' works, how it affects the public feeds, what content is visible, what are the conditions of that visibility, etc. ?

@welshpixie I believe that "silence" means that you still have to approve follow requests even if your account is public, and their toots won't show up on the federated timeline. Otherwise it shouldn't be affected.

@fluffy Yeah, I'd like more detailed information than that though - will the posts of people on a silenced instance show up in hashtag searches? If a user on .art boosts an account from a silenced instance, but from an account they follow, will other users see it even if they're not following them?

@welshpixie @fluffy For the second question: yes. Explicitly boosted toots will not be affected by the silence.

There does seem to be a bug when you downgrade from a block to a silence, where previously-known accounts from that instance remain wholly blocked/suspended. At least in upstream Mastodon.