while individual instances might have explicit moderation policies related to CWs, the fedi-wide consensus has always been:
* CW the stuff you think should be CWed
* don't expect strangers to respond well to demands (including about CW topics)
* but actually think about CWs systematically
* and know that if you don't CW certain topics, the people who want those topics CW'd won't follow you (and might even mute or block you)
client-side filters for generating CWs (coming in masto 4, already part of clients like fern for years) resolve the tension between stuff you don't want to CW when posting about & stuff that you want CW'd when it shows up on your TL, and i hope more clients & instances begin to support it
the specific discourse is about CWing discussions of racism, & basically everything i've seen about it has made sense to me, but i don't have personal experience with this!
i hope client-side filters will resolve most of the tension on both sides of this conflict! the people who need to complain about racism are also the same people who most need a break from hearing about it, because they are the ones who are exposed to it & know it intimately