@neatchee AFAIK everything on Mastodon is always public, so yes, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to subscribe and see everything I'm able to see anyway without an account, of course without being able to interact if they don't want me to. This is about me though, other users on my same instances should never be exposed to contents blocked by default without opting in.

On the caching thing I get you (although firefish didn't seem a pedo instance on a first glance, but I didn't dig much), but I believe that's yet another defect of Mastodon which could easily be solved by simply not caching at all from instances in the default blocklist.

@neatchee I'm not sure that's the proper order of priorities, but I get that being this community admin you hold special responsibilities. I also don't agree at all, and this time without reservation, about not having the right to access everything in the Fediverse.

But I'm not blaming you for this, I blame Mastodon(?). To me it would be reasonable to have an instance-level banlist like we have now, but users should be able to override that and access whatever they want. Of course users staying with the default would not see any of my interactions with banned instances.

Mind that this is just food for thought, I know it's not up to you :)