That's an important one, especially with how long it took LW to upgrade. I completely get why it's more challenging for them due to their number of users, but that could be an argument for enthusiastic users to move elsewhere.
That's what I thought too, but then I had a look at Sharkey (and I guess Mastodon does the same), and it is possible to have private profile, that needs to accept requests before people are able to follow them.
I agree. I've seen cases of harassment before when one person would block the other, but then the blocked person would comment on most of the blocker comments to harass them further.
Be aware that your content may be downvoted as not completely related to the topic of the community. There is !taylorswift@poptalk.scrubbles.tech which will definitely welcome this kind of content.
Your instance looks very interesting, I'll have a look and wish you good luck here on Lemmy!
Hopefully this will drive people to switch to another instance, and the issue you mentions will be less present.