In light of all the above, I want to give a shout-out to the #Hachyderm moderation team. In my view, they are doing just about the best job any instance mod team could reasonably do under the current system: proactive, transparent, and often ahead of the curve on the block when these toxic trolls surface.
We can’t expect the average instance to do better — or even nearly as well. They're your gold standard for instance-level work. Further improvements must happen at the larger system level.