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.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, when account migration is delivered, it’ll be easier for people to grasp.
Also I’ll say this to anyone that stumbles across this post before joining Lemmy. Look for a small instance with room to grow as opposed to a massive instance. You’ll find your user experience a lot nicer.
Unfortunately this might not be true. Instances need maintainance. If the one that spun it up doesn’t dedicate time and resources to it your experience might just be worse than average.
In my case I was having all kinds of timeout issues and occasionaly instance went down. Moved to a bigger and more active one and never had issues since.