the reality is that with a lower population of users is that there aren't enough other voices to drown out these people

Yep. That, plus the jerks are always the loudest among any crowd.

That's one of the big perks of running my own instance. It's been a site rule from the start that it's absolutely not there to be a refuge because you're banned elsewhere. And I do ban toxic accounts (local and federated) very quickly. Lol, if .ml is "Lemmygrad-lite" mine can probably be described as "Beehaw-lite".