It is a shame. I was trying to help OP out, but I think they might have blocked me individually, maybe through a mass ban of individuals in a thread they found on lemmygrad. As for the instances that have already blocked us, it’s unlikely they will ever federate with us again.

Perhaps the devs could implement a “soft” ban as an alternative to outright removal from federation. Censoring a comment or thread created by a user from the targeted instance with a confirmation click to view. I’m sure a lot of these QoL features will be added when the devs get through the enormous backlog, which has only been growing larger due to the influx of new users.

For what it’s worth, lemmy.ml is growing very quickly, and while lemmygrad is also growing quickly, people seem to want to stick to communities in their local instance. As lemmy.ml continues to grow, you should see less content from lemmygrad users as we become more diluted here.

Beehaw is blocking lemmygrad, they’re federated with lemmy.ml which is federated with lemmygrad, though.

I’m a member of the lemmygrad instance and I don’t think I’ve see any content from beehaw, so you should be good over there.

Edit: Okay, I can confirm you cannot see any content from users in a blocked instance. I just looked at this thread from slrpnk.net and you cannot see my comment. And I also just read that you didn’t want to join beehaw. What’s wrong with beehaw?