@Thaminga because instances have no legal way to exert power over each other unless the admins have some interest in caring about what anybody else thinks; lots of admins have made it clear they don’t. Defederation is appropriate but will always result in some angry local users, making it more difficult to do- especially when the admin is at risk of getting screenshot dunked and generally slandered by other instance mods with similar attitudes for doing so, as Mawr discovered.

As usual, people with abusive attitudes have a substantial advantage over people with compassionate attitudes, because appeals to empathy are going to make every act challenging when everything upsets someone - except for people who think it’s funny to upset people and are proud of it.