Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your heart's in the right place, but the Internet is built on policies of individual networks because there is nobody to enforce. Your suggestion back to me is simply mine in different clothing, because you think someone can enforce such a global requirement. Enforcing policy like "filter or get depeered" is the only way to achieve a global requirement like you want with the way the Internet is structured. As akerl p…
Thanks for the kid-gloves reply :) I hadn't considered that there isn't really a central authority for controlling who runs a peer, aside from ICANN, but they have pretty loose reins. Funny that everyone waxes poetic about bitcoin being a revolution in anonymous and tacit network management. Meanwhile our little Internet experiment continues to be a HUGE tacit agreement to adhere to a handful of network protocols.
Even the fact that 'news.ycombinator.com' leads here is a de facto consensus since the Internet could, theoretically, switch roots tomorrow and completely invalidate every domain name. It won't happen, much to the chagrin of alt-root operators from the 90s and 2000s and contemporary attempts like NameCoin[0], but it can, and there is absolutely nothing ICANN could do about it. They charge admission to a well-maintained database that underpins this whole show, and that's pretty much the entirety of what they do.
It's on all of us to tend to the best interests of the Internet, and way too many people with access forget that. However, with responsibility like that also comes opportunity: once you realize that it's basically all of our good faith and de facto consensus holding this thing together, the barrier to entry for you to get involved with the Internet is suddenly far lower.
[0]: Oh yes, it's been tried, a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root