@apconf
>is federating with Gab more important than federating with Mastodon.technology
That's arguably some form of threat/blackmail. And yet Gab was the big baddy.

People keep saying Gab is this big pool of bigotry, and yet during this "incident" the true bigots were the ones that put pressure on other moderators to ban or defederate from Gab, or on app developers to IP ban the site. That's literal active discrimination, that's what being a bigot implies, that you do everything in your power to hurt someone, even when they have no way of influencing your life. The bigots of American slavery days weren't satisfied with just having a black slave, they were outraged at even the thought of a black person being free, and demanded all of them be treated as animals.

Gab didn't went out of it's way to tell other instances how they should treat LGBT people or minorities or people of certain political or religious ideologies. And for most part, they were either indifferent or happy that certain instances chose to defederate with them ("less degenerates" is how they usually phrased it).
But certain Mastodon moderators did see fit to destroy Gab for their political ideologies. Not so they could keep their users safe, that could have been easily done with just a instance suspension, but because they are intolerant and bigoted towards people of other political views.