Thank you for the clarification!

And what happens if an admin of a non-login server bans a user? Is that just a ban across all communities of that specific server?

Here, if I'm banned from [email protected] I can still fiddle around on [email protected].

Huh, you can? I've been told that bans are federated, so if you're banned on one lemmy instance, you are also automatically banned across all connected instances.

It turns out Lemmy has a mechanism for federating block lists.

So if you get banned by lemmy.ml for "Orientalism", you get a fediverse-wide ban? That doesn't sound like a better system than reddit, that sounds like a worse system! At least reddit mods could only kick you out of their own subreddit, not the whole site.