Wellll, as someone that caught some shit for criticizing how people behaved in response to his fuckery, you might think I'd agree. I don't.

Now, my hot take is that the initial problem wasn't that he made a front end that included a block list. I'm fine with that, though I would be dubious of a single person deciding what was on said list no matter what else was involved.

The problem was it taking extra effort to even know it was there, much less see what was on it. Seriously, had everything been fully transparent up front it would come down to freedom of choice in developing it, and whether or not it would be used by any given instance.

Shit, anyone with any sense runs filters on apps that have them available, we block users, communities and instances. Of course a front end that gives extra ability to block things would be okay. That's not what it was. It was explicitly opt-out, with obscured content.

Other than a handful of people that would whine about anything, the thrust of the complaints is the underhandedness of it.

Me? I would hope that every instance he had accounts on would ban them, and any future ones. That's it, end of where I think it should go.