Yeah, I was already panicking more than a little with the vast array of unexplained options, so hearing and seeing that for myself was really the nail in what was already a really stressed out coffin. Hearsay is the admin of lemmyworld (ruud) is pretty standup, so that bears mentioning. But kbin's sign-up felt like it would take a lot of the guesswork out of something I didn't understand, and I already liked what I saw from Ernest. He seems down-to-earth and honestly dedicated, and I'm much more comfortable seeing where he takes kbin than I would be with them and lemmy.
My other option was going to be beehaw. I was really interested in their avowal to talk problems out as humans rather than insta-banning without giving users a chance to improve, as well as their removal of the downvote button. I'm still curious to see what that will do to the dynamics there. But then I dallied in actually applying to it, and I found out Beehaw is among the top instances that's blocked the highest amount of other instances already, which I'm not pleased with. To be blunt, it makes the whole thing feel like a really progressive North Korea.
Sure enough, glancing at their mod log as I type this, there's already one ban for "orientalism" and another for posting a comment telling beehaw and lemmy to stop fighting with each other ("homophobia"). Don't think I'm really regretting that decision. Just gonna kick back in my chair and not read any more of that, I think.