This is certainly true, but I have a more pessimistic view that this type of fragmenting dooms this type of fediverse model from ever becoming mainstream. If every interest group splinters, eventually they're all small enough that they lack the weight to build momentum, as well as the resources to sustain the community long-term. We can see this in the mastodon nsfw instances (a bunch of them shut down), and IMO that's the inevitable fate of any small instance that lacks the numbers (read: financial support) to support a durable operation.
I think it's absolutely valid to defederate if the users from a particular instance have a propensity to violate the content policy here.
For communication purposes, I think it's important to clarify and emphasize that this is the case and it's not done for political reasons. Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but I always feel as though this is a slippery slope (e.g. defederating from the socialist instance, or the trans/lgbt instance). Personally, for transparency's sake, I think it's better to avoid giving the impression that admins defederate from instances that they simply dislike. IMO, the defederation process should go by a process that is clearly defined and a published policies/rules.
IDK if this is a hot take, but personally I think the only reason to defederate should be for content policy.
Otherwise, it should be up to individual users to block communities that they don't want to see.
Thank you for everything that you've done until now. There will always be a minority of haters, but please know there's a lot more of us who really appreciated your work (even if we are relatively quiet).
Unfortunately, this is a bottom line for me, and I won't be staying at LemmyNSFW (departure post).
Thanks for running this instance until now, and I wish you and your team the best.