"ability to share blocklists among pods, with standardized TOS terms that several pods could subscribe to" - is one of the things I was thinking would be a nice thing to make available - however I think it should not be on by default for new server setups (assuming it's a server setup to run one of these pods things you mention, I am considering this from my little understanding of how rocket chat and matrix and riot and things like that can work, I think it's similar in nature)

So I think it's great to have these kind of blocklists available to pods / servers / whatever instances, but I would like to see it as opt in, and selectivley able to opt out of whichever ones for any reason by the server / instance operator, and I think it should be optional for the users to opt out of whichever blocklists as well.

I can imagine there are many server/instance operators that would not want their users to be able to override the blocklists and I think that is fine, but I would also want people to post publicly, or at least available to their registered members, which lists were being used - so some transparency in the censoring.

I also think there needs to me be more safe space options, as I mentioned above - perhaps "rooms" where only known users who had been around for X amount of months or whatever could enter -

because, I think no matter how many blocklists are made, no matter how many cidr's are blocked, the truly evil trolls will find ways to circumvent the blocks, and they will get in, and they will post things you and your users do not want to see - and blocking them will make it more of a game and more of a win when they do get in,

So things can be made a bit better I think, but unless you enter a password protected chat area with just you and one other person you know - not being open to anyone else in the world - there is going to be risk. To think that any kind of shared censor list is going to make a magical space safe is not considering the ability and desire of those who want to ruin it.

On some of my sites I have several million ip addys blocked, a few countries via geoip, and yet I have still spent more than a dozen weeks of life researching ips for proxies / VPN, blocking those subnets, writing to ISPs and companies, filing complaints, contacting police in multiple countries, putting together evidence, dealing with lawyers, censoring "bad words" - all kinds of things.

In the end, I have limited some of the bad stuff that was posted by people who did not read our rules, I have stopped some of the spam bots. But, there is a kid in Canada that still comes in and ruins the whole thing for dozens of our users pretty much any time he wants. Sometimes its several times a day, sometimes it's once a week. I have found no way to actually stop it 100%.

So I look forward to some of these newer apps getting stronger with multiple moderation abilities. I do think we need to be careful forcing any one, or multiple people's ideas of what should be blocked on other people - as I have had good moderators and bad ones, and some that blocked some people for the wrong reasons - and deplatforming the non-popular is not the reason for the mod powers imho - and even with lots of mods we can't stop it all.

you've apparently seen much of this ebb and flow over the 7 years and finally had enough - I can relate, it's not easy. One of things we decided was forced vacation breaks for the mods to keep sanity and perspective.

The more options the better imho, so long as they are optional.