How can decentralized social systems like #mastodon handle political / social attacks?

How does the #fediverse handle new instances that in some sense conflict with the values of existing instances?

I imagine lots of people are arguing about this, but I'm not seeing the debates. Are they in private for strategic reasons, or am I just looking in the wrong places?

Is there a way that people (like me) trying to develop future decentralized systems can learn from current struggles?