The lemmy.ml instance has been problematic for a while largely because it’s rife with tankies, but it’s gotten a lot worse lately, and the mods and admins are going kinda crazy over there banning people and censoring stuff.
This is the fediverse working as intended. An instance gets shitty, and people migrate away from it to a better instance.
The moderation issue over there is problematic, but at the end of the day, if that’s how the .ml admins want to play it, it’s kinda their call. There’s no appeal process - they are the ultimate authority for that instance. And the user base can stay or migrate, depending on whether they want to put up with that bullshit. In a way, it’s actually kinda cool to see the theory of fediverse user migration patterns actually play out in response to real life context.