@kirby i think this is true - also there is just plain misinformation. you hear "xyz is doing abc" - you take your friend at face value - you dont want to go to detroit riot city & start trawling through post history just to double check something about some racist youve never heard of. but then no one does that, & information mutates. its also related to how cleaner open federation instances sometimes get lumped in with dark fedi - part of it i think is politically trying to disenfranchise open federation, from, say, dotart & the like. but then people don't want to check for lolicon receipts or whatever, they blindly import the blocklist , & then their own instance is now a source perpetrating this