Yes, I can't help but feel like this is just people learning how federated systems work. If you own the instance, you always have the power to block connections

Yes, I can't help but feel like this is just people learning how federated systems work. If you own the instance, you always have the power to block connections from any other instances. The whole point is that instances have control, and if you want control, you have the option to run your own instance. It's a distributed system of reputation.