Unfortunately I’m not based in the US.

Unfortunately this isn’t applicable outside of the US in many cases, like in my case.

Is there a way to choose which instances you want to include, instead of which ones you want to exclude? So the default is that no instances except the ones you explicitly allow, federate with you? Or is this against the spirit of the fediverse?

I’d love to support the fediverse but this sounds like a huge hassle and a problem. Maybe it’s just me though, I’m glad that there are others that have decided to host instances.