• It depends. Defederation for good reasons is good, defederation for bad or false reasons is generally bad.

    As an example, having a strict and democratic defederation/federation policy has contributed to Hexbear having the most active trans community on Lemmy, and it’s a good thing that there’s an actively protected trans space free from bigotry.

    At the same time, defederating from instances for political reasons under the guise of other reasons is generally a bad thing.

    It’s largely context dependent.