I think fediverse platforms could have the option to call for a vote in defederating.

Meaning, idk, users who have been active for the past X months on the instance get notified about the admins wanting to defederate from some instance, then the users get to check out the instance themselves and vote yes or no to defederate.

To be clear, I am not saying this should be “mandatory”, I am saying instance admins could have the option to call for a vote if and when they want to.

So you could decide to join an instance that vows to go the democratic way if you want to. Nothing would bind the admins to always call for a vote except their own word tho. Or you could not care about it at all and join an instance that also doesn’t care.