So in light of finding out that I can't block an instance as a user, I am trying to find an instance that actually suits me better. Specifically I do not want to see anything relating to lemmygrad.ml and from what I can see, the main instances that block lemmygrad are lemmy.one which isn't accepting new applications and beehaw which, while I don't mind interacting with their instance at all, I don't wish to join it for a couple reasons. There are others like midwest.social but I don't live near there and while I know it is open to people that don't live there it doesn't exactly seem like where I would want to make an account that I plan on actually using.
So if I'm not mistaken, my options are basically to stay on lemmy.ml and deal with having to see posts and comments from lemmygrad.ml users, go to beehaw which I also don't want to do, make a new instance for myself which I'm not going to do, or just leave and come back later when there are actually options that suit me better. Does that sound about right?
Yeah, we're essentially in complete agreement. As far the irl Nazi example, I know it isn't a perfect analogy because as you mention it isn't possible to avoid that physical interaction unless I either avoid meeting them by restricting myself or by restricting them. To be clear, if I knew that there was a Nazi where I wanted to go then I would happily restrict myself by not going there to avoid them. Do I think that Nazis and their ideals should be openly shunned and even restricted in our society? Absolutely. But in the moment when I have to choose whether or not to approach them I am still happy to go out of my way to avoid them despite I not thinking that should have to in an ideal world. But I digress, irl and online are two different environments with very different rules that limit how they can work as well as different social norms. Fortunately, an online environment does allow me to choose who I want to interact with more easily without restricting myself or the other party as much typically.
I understand that up until now it's been a pretty small community with a small team of devs devoting their time to it and that things take time to implement. I'm not in any way trying to say that the devs should have already done this or that I expect it to be done in a week or anything like that. I just want my frustrations and feedback to be known so that priorities can be adjusted if necessary depending on how many people agree with me. And if it was an active decision to not allow users to block instances to have that decision reconsidered hopefully.
If I can't find a solution to my problem and there is no interest in creating a solution for an extended period of time then maybe the community just isn't for me and that's perfectly okay. I don't have any illusions that things should always work the way that I want. But if widespread adoption is something that this community is interested in then feedback like this is extremely important I think. Other people will feel the same way as me. I don't know how many but certainly a percentage of the people that come from reddit will feel this way. And if there is no solution in sight then they will consider leaving just like I am.