sad truth: as long as instances like .art keep moderating as they do ("proactively", guilt-by-association, etc.), Mastodon and the fediverse as a whole will stagnate.

I get that people want to keep it "manageable", but you also want more people to adopt the concept and ideology so we are not dependent on centralized services.

but new users will leave right away if they have to deal with federation issues if they can't interact with friends.