I found that things became much more pleasant on here when I blocked hexbear. I recently blocked lemmy.ml as well, but I may reverse that if I find that I’m missing too much good content.
I’m open to other ideas on how to mostly avoid people who love conflict or argue in bad faith.
I can’t block instances, only specific communities or users. But when they pop up, I do block all communities from: Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and Lemmy.ml.