Is this just the inevitable tradeoff of federation? If anyone knows of a less regulated piefed instance, I’m all ears.

it's a tradeoff you're choosing to accept by using piefed; it literally had other fediverse instances blocking hard coded in its source.

i hate letting anyone decide who i can and can't talk to so i chose instances with minimal blocking set by default and you might want to consider it if letting others decide for you is causing you this sort of consternation.