It's mostly large if you make it large. I run a single-user Pleroma instance, my fediverse network is relatively small and for the most part I can keep my timel

It's mostly large if you make it large. I run a single-user Pleroma instance, my fediverse network is relatively small and for the most part I can keep my timeline clean purely by reaction. Even having around 20 users or so is still relatively manageable (used to run an open signup instance in the past). Basically as long as you don't exceed Dunbars Number[1], moderating a fedi instance is fairly painless. External moderation can generally be managed with snap decisions. If you use Pleroma (and you should, it's much more technically competent than Mastodon), you can manually disable external user accounts specifically from federating with your instance. Beyond that, most fediverse servers kinda make it really obvious whether or not you want to associate with them; they tend to be fairly open about what is and isn't allowed on their about pages so if you get a misbehaving user, you can usually see at a glance if the problem is instance-wide or just some random vandal. Your biggest burden really is local moderation, external moderation isn't a big deal at all. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number