It is a bit more nuanced than that. There are normal people there, too. It's been one of the largest instances when the Reddit exodus happened. Some of the users chose the largest and the 'official' instance. And some of them are still there.

But lemmy.ml is operated by the same people who also run lemmygrad, some moderators seem to be the same. And unfortunately the whole Lemmy software platform is developed by "those" people.

I don't mind leaning a good amount to the left. I think a few socialist values would advance society and economy. Especially in places like the USA. And I've been called a communist for that. But being a tankie is beyond my comprehension. Why would anyone like Putin, defend the CCP and what they do to people. And I'm not overly bothered with the left vs right. It's the constant yelling, being super argumentative, doing brigading and spreading misinformation.

I think things are changing. I'm paying attention now to the usernames in the comments. And lemmy.ml isn't the dominating place anymore. Most of the usernames I see come from a broad range of instances. And that's a good thing. It's still a home to some big communities which needs to change, too. And I'm also waiting for a new software to come along, written by different people with a different motivation and agenda. In my opinion that's one of the next steps to emancipate ourselves. I mean if you don't like lemmy.ml you probably don't like the people making the decisions there. Which unfortunately are the same people who also write all of the Lemmy software. And their software development decisions reflect the same attitude. But also that's going to change. A few people are working on good alternatives which strive to listen to the community, invite people to participate and also finally implement proper moderation tools and a few other tweaks to foster good behaviour.

I like Lemmy. But this platform had a hard time from the start. And it's still struggling. Mixing technological difficulties and innate problems of growing a community with drama, bad decisions, waywardness and friction within the community on many different levels is just stupid and unnecessary. But I'm still waiting for progress and a bright future. I think Federation is one of the best approaches with some potential to make that happen.

I think the solid technological basis is what I'm a bit more concerned as of now. But apart from that I agree that it is us, the community who sets the tone and we decide who we want to listen to, nice people or people with behaviour disorders and an attitude. And it's a vicious circle. At some point a platform has an image and is bound to tip and attract more like-minded people and less normal ones. And the dynamics are there and we need to actively fight for a nice place.