Reposting this in comment from a reply elsewhere in the thread.
If anything there should be SOME centralization that allows other (known, somehow verified) instances to vote to disallow spammy instances from federating. In some way that couldn’t be abused. This may lead to a fork down the road (think BTC vs BCH) due to community disagreements but I don’t really see any other way this doesn’t become an absolute spamfest. As it stands now one server admin could spamfest their own server with their own spam, and once it starts federating EVERYONE gets flooded. This also easily creates a DoS of the system.
Asking instance admins to require CAPTCHA or whatever to defeat spam doesn’t work when the instance admins are the ones creating spam servers to spam the federation.
Nope. When government workers do it they only allow them to do it for short stints, mandatory counseling, and then they’re done. Referring to specifically reviewing CP-and similar related cases, but there is plenty of that being shared on Facebook. We don’t see it because it’s reported and the paid moderators dispose of it quickly.