memes

I presume that it was a simple misunderstanding, but in any case it has lead to some... interesting, and ultimately quite fruitful discussion, so there's that to have enjoyed:-).

And it really shouldn't have been hard-coded like that. A minor issue imho, and one not really a problem until now, but at least it's already now well on its way to being resolved. In contrast, Lemmy's own hard-coding of Lemmy.ml into the equivalent function I doubt will ever be changed, certainly not without strong reluctance (and likely along with public outcry, as before with the filter list).

One point: I would argue that opt-in vs. -out doesn't fully apply here, as this automated convenience function will only ever be run once upon initial setup for an instance, after which the instance admin can add any communities they desire, manually (I'm not sure why OP phrased it then as needing to be "debugged", that seems an odd term for such routine instance maintenance tasks that do not need any modification of any code at all, anywhere?). In short, it's not actually a "block" at all, as the wording in the meme seems to me to strongly imply by using "federate"). The phrase "opt-out" usually referrs to something harsh but that isn't all the way fully forced, but this issue of not pulling in (initially) of communities is so extremely gentle than on the spectrum it is adjacent to "opt-in" already? Still, ultimately you are probably correct, I am just not sure of the wording there, so wanted to help by offering those additional nuances.