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.
I actually haven't seen much mention of tankies on any Lemmy except as a joking reference here or there. I'm on lemmy.ml and the signup there said explicitly that it is a free software community. The signup had no particular reference to other politics, though I have no idea what is present in the admins' minds. There is also lemmygrad.ml which is explicitly socialist.
Lemmy feels as a aplha/beta product that we ar all testing right now. Nothing wrong with that, in fact, I like Lemmy more then Reddit. But you cannot expect everyone to love it right now.
For Reddit its clear: you sign up, you search for a community and you subscribe.
Here, you sign up (if you don't get the spinning wheel). You search for a community. Oh, it is on another instance. What is a instance? Then you browse and see different Lemmy websites. You get confused, you heard something about Fediverse but what is it?
Also, there is no karma what important is for many users. Mod tools are extremly limited and all the apps you can use on mobile are in alpha/beta/in development.
There should be a easy to understand welcome page upon sign-up and I think this needs to be prioritized if we want to welcome (more) mainstream users. The post that explains how Lemmy works on c/lemmyworld doesn't cut it.
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.
I've said it before but I'll say it again, when account migration is delivered, it'll be easier for people to grasp.
Also I'll say this to anyone that stumbles across this post before joining Lemmy. Look for a small instance with room to grow as opposed to a massive instance. You'll find your user experience a lot nicer.
Does this make sense only to you, who understands?
PSA
This is a prostate specific antigen. Thanks for your educational post.
If you want people to understand then use plain English to lower the barrier of entry. Otherwise you're just going to be going crazy with all the noobs who haven't got a clue what you're talking about.
Lemmy is great but this confusion is why the Fediverse might need to have some issues worked out. When stuff defederates from the other instances and people wanna go on them all, it kind of defeats the purpose and makes some people go back to "standard" social media. It also just confuses people.