Too many people are confusing the two. Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid, people go “Lemmy is getting worse and worse,” or “I’m leaving Lemmy,” or worse, “I’m leaving for Beehaw.”
If you’re using Beehaw, then you’re using Lemmy. Lemmy is the software these instances run on. If you don’t like lemmy.ml, join another instances that have rules that match your philosophy. Some instance hosts authoritarian or fascist shit? Turn to another Lemmy instance. Lemmy.ml is not even the biggest instance. People who just joined and are unfamiliar with the platform will just think the entire Lemmyverse is run by autocratic admins if we don’t get our terminology right.
Sure, but the thing is if you say anything about the context of the war in Ukraine that doesn’t toe the G7 party line, you get called a Tankie and your comments get deleted. On Lemmy grad I haven’t seen a single post saying they are "pro Russian’ or 'support genocide in Russia ’ but we get labeled as having those opinions. It’s a strawman argument. And it’s used by liberals and capitalists to shut down actual dialogue.