There are a couple of instances that are clearly misaligned with my values, but they're very active, so a lot of the communities keep popping up in my feed. I've been blocking the communities, but it would be pretty cool if I could just block the entire instance. I know an instance can defederate from another instance. Is there a way for an individual user to do something similar, short of spinning up an entire instance myself?
Exactly. Hexbears posting culture diverged off into its own Darwinian branch and getting back to wider federation has been a bit of a wake up call for both camps.