can’t have your cake and eat it too. the way federation works means bigger instances will always have more influence, but it’s a double edged sword. They cannot defederate from everything or it just turns into a normal centralized reddit knockoff, so the best thing to do is not to give in to their demands, if it gets bad enough the users will move; something else will become the next “flagship instance”.

nothing is exactly stopping you from jumping instances each time until you find someone that does not care for petty cross-site drama. username and comment history goes bust, but maybe that’s a good thing; less traceability.