Too many people are confusing the two. Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid, people go “Lemmy is getting worse and worse,” or “I’m leaving Lemmy,” or worse, “I’m leaving for Beehaw.”
If you’re using Beehaw, then you’re using Lemmy. Lemmy is the software these instances run on. If you don’t like lemmy.ml, join another instances that have rules that match your philosophy. Some instance hosts authoritarian or fascist shit? Turn to another Lemmy instance. Lemmy.ml is not even the biggest instance. People who just joined and are unfamiliar with the platform will just think the entire Lemmyverse is run by autocratic admins if we don’t get our terminology right.
It feels like this is more aimed at outing admins or mod teams that people will disagree with. I have no issue with any other Lemmy instance, because I’m not a member of their instance. The community will have some things to figure out as far as easily relating the nature of instances and the fediverse, which it looks like will take some trial and error.
There’s things users will pick up on just fine, while the main complaint is “too many communities” where people desire a centralized system to replace Reddit with. It’s my personal opinion that people only think they want a centralized system, and given the situation with Reddit, it highlights how beneficial of a concept the Fediverse and Lemmy itself is over a centralized system, but I digress.
Lemmy.ml’s stances on Russia, China, and “tankies” is great…for them. I have no issue with how any other instance is run or what their community prefers for a style of moderation. They are free to run it as they see it. It’s telling that it went from the largest instance to taking a backseat to many others though given the word got out prior to this post, and that’s fine. I won’t begrudge them over their instance’s nature. It just makes me love Lemmy as a whole.