This seems like a much more manageable approach. Obviously illegal content needs to be banned, but as long as NSFW content is legal and properly tagged, it can be an entirely opt-in experience (with some default/UI tweaks if it's not the case already). I understand that people don't want to see otaku lolichans or whatever, but even on Reddit enabling NSFW could get you a prolapsed anus, a brutal beheading, or any flavor of extreme fetish that has just as much potential to ruin your day. Even as someone who doesn't seek any of this out, I'd still like to have aggregation of the largest NSFW feeds (which is majority pretty tame by comparison). If there's a possibility for this stuff to sneak into /m/random or wherever, that can be addressed without defederation.

One of the reasons I joined Kbin is because it isn't Beehaw, and doesn't have the mission of curating a family-friendly safe space engineered not to offend anyone, ever. Moderation is necessary to mitigate habitual bad actors and comply with legal standards, but self-imposing a mandate beyond that just creates an endless stream of drama in service of a goal that's impossible to attain. As the fediverse grows, this kind of controversy will become more and more common as with all social media, and it's not tenable to try be responsive to the whims of every person or group who wants to impose an agenda or finds their sensibilities violated by this or that community. It fuels conflict, promotes censorship, and incentivizes grandstanding by people who are more concerned with policing the actions of others than contributing constructively to discussions.

Who wants to read a post feed that's dominated by people arguing about this stuff and calling each other names over the new hot-button moderation issue of the day? How is that any better than Twitter?