On a more serious note, this cements lemmy.world inevitable slide towards fascism. There's very little reason why anyone would use a Lemmy instance instead of just sticking with Reddit or migrating away from Reddit clones altogether. Much like the Windows vs Linux debate, Reddit is technologically inferior but has the huge advantage of being what everyone uses.

The only reason to stick it out on a Lemmy instance instead of just returning to Reddit is because:

1. They are ideologically socialist.

2. They are unhinged fascists. (Cryptofash are more than welcome on Reddit)

3. They are trans or a member of some other marginalized community who want a refuge away from dipshit bigots.

4. They are pedos.

5. They want to resurrect /r/shoplifting and not be constrained by Reddit's ToS.

6. They want to openly discuss the purchase of drugs.

7. They want to openly discuss piracy.

8. They want to discuss miscellaneous illegal shit.

These are the people who legitimately have no place on Reddit and need to find somewhere else if they want to use a Reddit clone. 1 and 2 are self-explanatory. 3 and 5 are fellow travelers with 1. 4 are fellow travelers with 2. 5, 6, and 7 can be lumped into 8. So the simplified version becomes:

1. They are socialist or a fellow traveler (marginalized communities, shoplifting)

2. They are fascist or a fellow traveler (pedos)

3. They want to openly discuss doing illegal shit (drugs, piracy, shoplifting, adventurism) that goes against the ToS.

Attracting these 3 types of people are the primary means for a Lemmy instance to grow. However, most large Lemmy instances are filled with (ex)-Redditors with snitch energy. In other words, loser squares who are nowhere cool enough to attract 3. And it goes without saying that you can't attract both 1 and 2 no matter how much enlightened centrists want to try.

In the end, your average Lemmy instance has to either:

1. Ideologically commit to either socialism or fascism in order to attract more people who don't or can't use Reddit.

2. Stagnate and wither to nothing.

By preemptively defederating from the largest socialist instance while at the same time digging their feet to reluctantly defederate from a fascist instance, lemmy.world has chosen to commit to fascism in order to grow its numbers. Beehaw has chosen to cling to their liberalism and stagnate. I also wonder whether lemmy.world orientating itself towards fascism has to do with beehaw being ideologically committed towards liberalism. After all, instances compete with each other for members. Two liberal instances compete for the same pool of users, but if one of those liberal instances is far more lax about fascism, then they're no longer competing from the same pool.