thank you for the apology. i'll put this to rest now. sorry if i've come off strong, i'm just frustrated and hurt from having to deal with literally months of getting ridiculed by trying to clear up this misunderstanding.
i do think that rainbow's apologies and requests to her followers are a step in the right direction, but please note that she never addressed the root causes (AKA, her continuing to interact with unsavory types, and keeping the public blocklist). i personally feel like she was only doing damage control due to pressure being put on her.
i don't think that blocklists are a bad thing at all, but it really depends on how you use them. i believe that rainbow was deliberately inciting harassment with her blocklists. i don't expect you to agree with me but please consider these things:
the blocklist directly tagged people, thus making them aware of the blocklist's existence. oftentimes, this resulted in people reacting or asking to be taken off the blocklist, which would result in ridicule from rainbow and her followers.
the blocklist very rarely included proof. a lot of the justifications for the blocklist were straight up wrong, i.e. i am very much not a proshipper, yet i got accused of being one for some reason. rainbow would not address false accusations no matter what.
furthermore, rainbow accused some people are some very derogatory things, like being a "failed mother". do you think someone who cares about peace and protection would talk about others that way?
despite the blocklist causing harassment time and time again, rainbow never deleted it or made it private. she never took people off. she could've made it a google doc or something and privately shared it with her friends. the most she did was change the username when she was confronted over it. she was told plenty of times that her blocklist was causing pain and she did nothing about it.
anyway... from what i can tell, i think you're a good person with strong values, and you want to do what's right by your friends. those are great qualities to have, but please, please realize that people will take advantage of you because of this. rainbow was taking advantage of you. if someone expects you to always fight their battles and follow their lead, that is a glaring indicator that they don't have your best interests in mind. that's all i really want you to understand.