EDIT: It seems that I have may have gotten the wrong impression about the community structure here from the @TheDude comment I listed below. It looks like this should have been posted to The Agora. I appreciate everyone who took the time to respond. Now I must go find fresh air and see if I can find this grass thing that I have heard so much about.
First, let me say thank you for spending your time and money on creating and maintaining this instance.
Second, the name sh.itjust.works is great. It gives me a little half smile every time I type it.
Third, I am hoping this can be my Fediverse home base but I have a single concern.
Now on to the meat:
I have been over on lemmy.world for the last few days and really enjoying the content and experience, but as I was learning more about the Fediverse I realized they have blocked a whole slew of other instances. Most of the reason I have grown to dislike and distrust reddit over the years was because of their random subreddit bans that didn't follow their own rules and processes, so it was a pretty big turn-off for me looking at the lemmy.world Instances List.
When I heard this instance only had two blocked instances, I immediately came here to check it out. I quickly saw like-minded individuals genuinely engaging in reasonable discussion about what should and should not be defederated, so I decided to go ahead and make an account. It didn't take long though before I decided to look into why each of the instances were banned.
It seems like burggit allows simulated CP which is a pretty decent reason for blocking them in my mind. On the other hand, the only thing I could find about lemmygrad.ml was this (https://sh.itjust.works/comment/130474) post that says you blocked it because of your personal convictions.
Given that this instance is your own personal project, I certainly don't fault you for choosing what is acceptable and what is not, but I am concerned about making sh.itjust.works my home base if it is just the start. Based on the previous post it doesn't seem like something you are going to change your mind about, nor do I have an interest in trying to convince you to do so. What I would like to know is if this is going to be a regular thing.
Are you intending to block any instances with political opinions that you are staunchly against? Further, are you planning to create any sort of standard for what kind of instance you are likely or unlikely to ban in the future?
Bonus question for my curiosity: What makes lemmygrad so against your personal convictions? While I have a basic understanding of Marxism/Communism and am aware that current communist countries have a pretty questionable history of violence and suppressing personal and political freedoms, I think an objective viewer might say the same thing about the representative republic that I live in.
tl;dr: Are you going to block other instances for personal reasons? Also, are you going to create any standards to indicate which instances may be blocked in the future?
It won't matter if you block communities from lemmygrad they will come to your posts and comments especially if they are pro west, leftist, capitalist, anti china etc...
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/229915
https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/444856
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/714337
If you are those things they literally hate you, if you post in their instance and are anti china you will be banned. It's a giant echo chamber and they want to be able to post in your instances and communities. There is not point talking to them since they are hyper fixated on that, just browse their instance. Most other spicy instances at least know and tell their users to keep spicy shit inside their own instance and not take it elsewhere.
While I want to blow off this comment with something like, "zealots will be zealots", that first link reads almost like a fantasy novel description of cartoon bad guys. It is a bit weird seeing it laid out like that, and that is from someone who spent a bit too much time in church during my late teens.
I think it's just a sign that echo chambers are bad, while yes you should block some communities that are bad actors or host illegal content. You shouldn't block everything that you don't like. Reddit almost feels the same way these days but from the left perspective. Politics does crazy stuff to people, it's wild.