the norm is that the users block the individuals and instances they want no part of?
“Yeah, just block every bigot in existance and you will achieve a somewhat good experience”
Spammers also exist, and they can go long ways to avoid blocking by e.g. creating many accounts. There are people out there who could do this just to troll and harass a single user. If you’re fine with blocking every piece of shit there are - good for you. But it doesn’t mean it should be a norm.
This isn’t rocket science. First, let instance maintainers handle bigots, spammers etc. on their own instance. If you still find that instance contributing with too much crap in your feed - block those users or the entire instance. I’ve blocked several accounts and a couple of instances. It’s very easy to do.
And again, there could be a number of tools and features created to help users block stuff. Use your imagination. A user with an orange warning triangle is harassing you? Well that triangle means that user is in one or more block lists for problematic behavior - do you want to use any of those block lists? Click a button. Or whatever. Just let the users decide and prevent instances from creating a cascading instance-blocking that puts the fediverse at risk.