Think about it; instead of those in charge or the instances deciding who they don’t want to be federated with and thus restricting content for the users, it would be better if users were able to block entire instances instead.
We’d be able to curate our own browsing experience so much better without admin/mod drama influencing the rest of us.
Edit: Alright so maybe not exactly replace defederation, but it should still be an option available to us, and in general should become the default action before defederation IMHO.
The problem comes when the vegan store has items you want but they decided that they will not distribute them to stores that also sell chicken stock. And if that happens with multiple other cases you’ll be forced to visit multiple stores to get your groceries.
Which wouldn’t be that weird if it wasn’t because all those stores belong to the same “universal general store” chain that was originally designed so you would only need to visit your closest store to access all products. Or at least, that’s how it’s often sold, since that’s the most significant advantage over most competing chains.