I joined via lemmy.world because at the time the stats just looked favorable, with the limited knowledge I had (uptime mostly).

As someone with experience in software engineering you learn to differentiate between the product and the dev.

It's especially easy with Lemmy, because every instance has its own vibe it seems. Would I join lemmygrad or how that instance is called? Probably not, but because it's the users who in the end define the direction of an instance I see no problem.

Freedom of speech is important and if all those tanky instances are about is their agenda, they will end up in an echo chamber sooner or later, as more regular people migrate and simply drown them out.