Reading through the comments in their post I'm losing the little sympathy I was feeling. It looks like the moderation tool they are hoping for is one that allows their users to access other communities while preventing the other communities from accessing beehaw. That feels shortsighted and selfish, and I would think most communities on that end on the block would block them reciprocally.

They are actively trying to be as clean and friendly as possible, and that's admirable but the tools don't exist for them to maintain that if they are fully federated. they are woefully undermoderated for how much traffic they are having to filter.

Once better mod tools arrive they may be able to re-open to other large instances.

Perhaps an option in the future would be for them to remain federated but somehow implement post/comment restrictions on outside instances to keep it under control.

many of those are imported from the tier0 Fediblock list, which includes all the instances any decent human being would want to block as well. I don't see myself wanting any content from pedo dot school or teenagegirls dot biz.