Curious to hear other thoughts about this, as I'm trying to keep !simracing@lemmy.ml active, but might suggest to move it elsewhere if a lot of people prefer not to interact with lemmy.ml communities
Lemmy.ml has some less-bonkers communities, but !worldnews@lemmy.ml generates some of the most complaints, and I'm willing to paint with a broad brush on this one. There's only one community that I can think of that I regret not using and doesn't presently have a non-lemmy.ml alternative, and that's !mechanicalkeyboards@lemmy.ml, and !ergomechkeyboards@lemmy.world has overlap. Also, aside from issues with instance policy, I think that lemmy.ml in particular is not a great instance for major communities, because it's the "dev" instance and Lemmy has had some serious periods of problems where stuff slipped through testing and led to major problems in new releases. Lemmy.world did not hit this, because the admins there are more-conservative about updating, held off until they were sure that new releases were solid. My own home instance at lemmy.today crashed into repeated serious problems with new releases, and the admin decided that in the future, he would also be more conservative about updates.
I also think that it's broader than disagreeing with someone. I'm not a furry or trans, for example, but I've no problem with pawb.social or lemmy.blahaj.zone and have never seen any complaints about moderation on those special-interest instances. However, there's an entire community, !MeanwhileOnGrad@sh.itjust.works, that highlights a lot of moderation and infighting stuff that often I'd call pretty unreasonable off in .ml land. Beehaw.org is pretty left-wing, but they're pretty mellow and don't have the same issues (though they themselves have defederated with a number of major lemmy instances, including, most notably, lemmy.world).
That being said, a number of major lemmy instances have defederated with lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, and I chose my home instance of lemmy.today specifically because it did not defederate with instances. I want to personally make the call on instance content and on users on an instance. I've only ever blocked one user, and they were just relentlessly spamming images in communities, and I've never blocked an instance. I normally just view communities by subscribed, look at a "whitelist" of communities, not "all" plus a blacklist, though.
EDIT: Oh, and !kagi@lemmy.ml doesn't presently have an alternative, and I'd definitely participate in a non-.ml alternative.
I also think that it’s broader than disagreeing with someone. I’m not a furry or trans, for example, but I’ve no problem with pawb.social or lemmy.blahaj.zone and have never seen any complaints about moderation on those special-interest instances.
Thank you for pointing this out, that's a good point
I have seen complaints about them, but they seem relatively minor and resulting from an overzealous attempt to protect their users, which I find understandable. I have never had anything but pleasant conversations with Ada the instance admin of lemmy.blahaj.zone and have thoroughly enjoyed everything I've ever read from them.