Really great ideas. I read up a bit on Fediblock and I think you’re absolutely right.
If I could riff off of your ideas a bit: instance-blocking recommendation lists bundle an entire stack of things together:
statements of fact or intent: this is wrong, this is right, this is insulting and harmful, this is insulting but not harmful if you can laugh at it
value judgements about those statements: I care about this issue but not that issue, this wrong statement is easily disproven, that wrong statement takes paragraphs to disprove, etc.
actions to take based on those value judgements: block, tag with a statement, link to an article, etc.
With things bundled, the whole stack has to be a pretty close match for a user’s own values, or else there’s friction. The user can just tolerate the friction, maybe miss out on some content, or they can decide to switch to a whole new list.
Suppose we could unbundle those from each other. Subscribe to the work of a group of volunteers that recommends safe defaults but lets you customize things when you encounter friction points.