I honestly don’t know what the big fuss is about. I became member of Lemmy.ml a couple of years ago when it was basically the only existing instance if I remember correctly. I’ve never seen any drama apart from posts like this that claim the admins suck or the users suck. Maybe those claims are even valid, but do they even affect the average user at all? I’ve considered changing instances even, but it seems rather a lot of effort for a lot of hot air to me.
True, I don’t pay much attention to the mod log for example, I did not even know it was a thing. I regularly browse my communities and /r/all or whatever the main feet is called. I am here for content that interest me, no matter on what instance it is hosted. I thought that was the whole point of federation.