Yet Gab persisted and continued to grow, highlighting one of federation’s important limitations: defederation can isolate bad actors, but it doesn’t eliminate them.

It’s only a limitation from a censorial governments point of view.

If we as users and communities at large have tools to isolate from something we don’t want to see or might break our community rules that is enough to have a good experience. We shouldn’t be bullied into eliminiating content we disagree with or is against our rules beyond preventing it from reaching our commuinities. If the content is not against the law, there is no obligation to do anything, so the only wellbeing of individual communities should matter and actions should be limited to achieving that goal.