Lots of thoughts on this. I've built basic Allowlist and Blocklist functionality and support for nip51 lists into relay.tools already. I think that it will take a multi-faceted approach to achieve what you're talking about. It's not as simple as having generic lists. Creating pubkeys is too frictionless for blocklists to function on their own. Incentives for moderation on it's own, also, not going to work. I think a community approach to lists and moderation could work but does require a moderation team that is aligned to a particular goal. Once this goal is achieved communities could potentially work with each other to collaborate on lists.

You're right about it being controversial, anytime I mention it someone attacks the relays with some random mess of stuff to try to break things. It's annoying but it also shows what works and what doesn't.

Clients like to think they're using a serverless peer to peer network but this is not how relays work. Someone is on the hook for storing and relaying the data (in clear text!!!) so it's selfish and naieve for a client to just say 'no blocking, only client logic'. I encourage anyone who's kneejerk reaction is such to consider what it's like to store and relay someone who you don't know's data. It's an important distinction and if we get this wrong we will end up exactly like big tech with a centralized 'relay authority' deciding for us or simply no one wanting to run a relay. Right now, I gotta say that incentives to run a relay are slim to none, so I hope that savvy nostr users enjoy and understand the tech enough and will come around to being more supportive.