rabidly excited fans bring serious disadvantages 

for example when I joined Mastodon I tried to search, couldn't, was shocked by the absence of this basic feature. instead of telling me that it's on the way, and they're working on it, rabid fans told me that it's intentional and the platform is much better without a working search function. I'm sure tens of thousands of brand new Mastodon users quit the moment they heard that. 

It wasn't true by the way. Less than a year later an excellent search function was implemented. 

I think the same thing is happening here. I ask WTF?!? No Block Button?!?  and the rabid fans tell me I'm an idiot who hates free speech bla bla bla huge fight over a simple feature that will probably be implemented soon anyway, but the rabid fans leverage it to drive normies away.  

 Agreed! Things start somewhere but if that somewhere is too niche and rabid we risk for it to stagnate as just an interesting happy island for we niche and rabid people. 

 That’s fair. Goes both ways. I readily agree with you that there are plenty of missing features and lots will change (including in plenty of ways that some of those rabid early users hate). Evolution. 

I am happy though that we have the space to experiment right now.