According to dev.lemmy.ml/instances, the lemmy.ml instance is “A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers.” What does that mean, and how is it enforced? Will right-wing but still-reasonable communities be taken down? Does the same apply for posts? What makes a community/post on-topic? And this may be an unpopular opinion, but I think that if lemmy.ml isn’t going to do anything to be leftist/pro-FOSS outside of the description (and banning racists, homophobes and Microsoft), the description should be taken down and replaced with something like, “Instance run and officially supported by Lemmy’s devs, where bigotry is banned” unless the title is there to scare away anti-vaxxers and Trump supporters (though the title also might scare away potential users).
Uh… You may not realise it but I for one joined because it is “leftist”. Scaring away people doesn’t work if they actually believe in what you say…
I should also say that I’d happily create my own instance except I can’t really afford the running costs.
Well in that case, welcome! I’d say it’s less “scaring away” people as opposed to each instance being its own niche.