I really like the fediverse. I made a Mastodon account after Elon bought Twitter, because it was pretty clear he was disingenuous. On one hand, he said he wanted to "promote free speech" but on the other hand it seemed like he was focusing on one particular kind of speech (i.e. bigotry). It's nice to see posts like this saying that lemmy hopes to be a different form of social media.
But... I can't help but feel like there may be a similar disingenuous story going on, as much as I hate to say it. I want the fediverse to grow into a safe place for anyone to express themselves. And it's hard to see that happening when the developers (and moderators of the original instance, lemmy.ml) are unapologetic authoritarians. When they say they want people to be respectful, there seems to be a double meaning. After all, banning people for talking about human rights violations doesn't seem to be conducive to an open, honest platform where people can express themselves. The developers of lemmy are, sadly, committed to the ideas of old-school authoritarian governments. And I worry that's going to be a damaging force in what could have otherwise been a wonderful platform. Just my two cents.