I didn't actually have this thought in the shower, but close enough: so many instances defedering from lemmygrad is the fediverse equivalent of international sanctions.
"In lemmygrad they only post pictures of the supreme leader and you are forced to upvote them all and if you don't do it then the mods execute you and then they eat your body before the rats do it so they won't starve".
There was a post on lemmy.world the other day where someone said users here were all paid agents who would be executed if we deviated from talking points.
You will upvote this picture of dear supreme leader and if I see a single speck of dust on that upvote your entire family will get genocided by the killer dolphin gestapo!
I mean they talk about us the way RFA talks about Cuba or DPRK. We're the DPRK of the Fediverse at this point and I'm chill with that.
If anything they're filtering MY experience so I don't have to handle too much libshit
It's more an attempt to create an echo chamber. And that doesn't even work well, because you can make an account somewhere else.
What exactly changes in the affected instances if lemmygrad users are denied access? If an instance were to attract proportionally bad attention because it was spamming, it could all make sense. But currently it's like on Reddit: If a mod sees that you're active in a subreddit that doesn't suit them, they ban you. Only here they ban you from a whole instance that also has non-political communities.
Nothing really changes since we could just make a non lemmygrad account, just prevents the lemmygrad (and sometimes lemmy) from being seen by "normies" so people can keep the projection that we're anti-LGBT facist nazi sympathizers going longer.
We also can still see their content as we wish through our lemmygrad account and even comment on the "lemmygrad" version of it (not sure if this would be a shared version with lemmy and co but I think they'd also see our comments?), they're just "muting" our community really. The way the fediverse works will we can see their content as long as Lemmygrad doesn't block them back, which I doubt us or Lemmy.ml will be blocking any of these places. for instance we have our own version of 196 thanks to the large "anti-tankie" stance they're taking but haven't blocked the lib version at all.
Our versions of these anti-federation communities may seem smaller but keep in mind our users are more keen on FOSS and supporting this project instead of just making Reddit 2.0 and as such I think the community (here or on lemmy.ml) will show more "heart" than the more close minded instances. After all these groups have a lot of... reddit type behavior in their posts and it's actually a huge turn off for me and others.
So we can still see them but they not us? Ok didnt know that. I thought you are then not able to see posts there. So no liberals will visit my pigeon sub, I can live with that.
To be honest I understand the possibility to defederate as a mechanism to get rid of spammy instances. Like blocking a mail provider which is known for sending spam mails. But creating echo chambers is quite stupid. I mean, I sometimes visit liberal communities an read their stuff so I know what is going on there. On Reddit I had the possibility to filter subs out (Boos for Reddit). But it was still my decision what I want to see and what not. Here they simply decide for the entire user base.
And this stupidity goes even further. I once read a post on reddit how someone discouraged using Lemmy, the software itself, because it is coded by "tankis". Unbelievable.