@kissane Something like your suggestion,
“building reputation systems (yes! I mean it!) to help guide server choices, with appropriately sophisticated mechanisms for handling maladaptive behaviors and bad actors.”
is needed.

One risk I see though is that something simple that is adopted by everyone will lead to cascade blocking of instances based on relatively little evidence. Such systems need to be fed by actual experiences of admins/mods and not just a big chain of “you block so I block”.