It's the end of the year and I fully advocate defederating my instance at this point

Forgive the vent, but it used to be that the instances were all simply opinionated in different ways. You could talk to anyone from any instance without anyone getting upset so as long as you were respectful. Being in an instance used to be enviable enough to jest about.

Early on, it went from that to "my opinion should not be pushed back against". For a while, you could not go into ML territory, for example, and challenge their status quo. Recently it has reached another new level, where people will obliterate you simply for being neutral, and this was after they began to break their own rules. Individual cities in my home country are beginning to consider banning the fediverse, and that's only because the country itself stopped short of doing it. I thought the fediverse was supposed to make things easier to enjoy. How can we trust we can look up to it in this social environment?