Honestly I'm pretty much in the same boat as you and I feel like the frenzy is overblown. Its especially right now with the huge influx of people from reddit, which by and large has users who are super lib/centrist. Some examples that people have given are their unwavering support of China, Russia, North Korea and denial about tianenman Square. I kinda side eye people who don't have nuanced takes about North Korea or any of those places for that matter. I am also hard pressed to think that people who specifically identify as ML's wouldnt do their research, but of course there are all kinds and dogma can happen anywhere. But yeah it's not like people are screaming "LETS GENOCIDE PEOPLE!!!". And they seem to have anti racist, anti transphobic stances, so Idk

The other commenter is correct but to add to number 3: there is not much difference to them now, but a lot of instances usually have a particular "flavor" to them. Like one might be more geared towards people who are interested I'm programming, others are leftist instances, others are geared towards furries, or music interests.. but that's very broad and you don't HAVE to choose an instance based on that. A lot of new instances have cropped up that are just "catch all" instances for the surge of reddit users. Look at the sidebar descriptions to see if there are any specifics to the instance and see what you vibe with.

In terms of functionality they work exactly the same

I think it has more to do with them being Marxist Leninists which is really problematic to a lot of people. You should go check it out and see for yourself what the posts look like.

I don't know that the developers of lemmy intended this to be a space mirroring reddit, nor did they expect a mass exodus of users from reddit jumping on to lemmy.

I agree with your sentiments! I love the engagement outside of all of these discussions and absolute flood of "how do I do xyz" and "it would be better if...." on like every single community and every post lol.

I want access to lemmygrad so I created another account, but overall I do like how beehaw is structured and all things considered I'm surprised at how much people are being critical of it, especially with Alyaza and Gaywallets very patient and thoughtful responses.

More what I'm getting at, though, in terms of trying to change lemmy is changing the culture of it. Regardless of where they are on the spectrum, it seems like most people on lemmy have been some flavor of leftist, and I could be wrong, but holy cow there are a TON of people "both sides"ing and using the example of discussion around gender affirming Healthcare not being a good convo to have here as something infringing on their free speech as if those conversations aren't dogwhistles for transphobia. People can happily move to other centrist instances, or ones like exploding-heads if they want to engage in that crap. Again, I'm a newb here and I could be off and maybe this has always been a thing, but I was on mastodon years ago which is similar and I wasn't too far off

I think in terms of technical development, of course there's always room for improvement but I also feel that some things are the way they are for a reason, and endless expansion might not be what the developers want, over a more cohesive, personal community. I go both ways on that.

My whole experience of moving to lemmy has felt like when people from another state move to a new one and complain about how awful it is and force it to change into where they left. If people are so absplutely offended by the politics of its originators, go create your own social media and stop harassing the poor mods, especially if the mods of this particular instance are trying go make your experience more palatable.

That's so beautiful! Are the hives the brown boxes inside the enclosure?

Hello I'm a nonbinary/masc leaning lil guy. I work with high risk populations at a non profit in the pnw. Feels weird to not be a programmer or something, seems that's what all the bee-hawers and fediverse users are into these days. Um, I'm autistic and have adhd, in my mid 30s, like to ride my bike, play pikmin bloom, garden, and take up hobbies quickly and then leave them for like 3 years. Oh I am also a really yuge music nerd, like, actually. Mmmmmmmyeap

It was recommended to me over Reddit as well. As I said in another comment, I've dabbled with Mastodon as well but I think I may like Lemmy more

I started using Mastodon a couple if years ago; didn't stay for long but it definitely felt more...friendly than Reddit, or personal I suppose. Glad I found Lemmy though I love the message board/forum format way better than a Twitter like format that Mastodon seems to have, though I do like both