It affects people who think that Lemmy.ml is the default instance, as it says itself and people say that any instance is fine to join.

It also affects people in the batshit insane comments that come from people on that instance, like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, that occur with noticeably higher frequency than from other places.

It also affects people on that instance who talk as if into a void with many people blocking their instance but they don’t even know that. And that effect will increase over time.

It lowers traffic on the Fediverse, decreasing overall engagement, and drives people away from it altogether. It also lowers the likelihood that you can recommend to people irl to check out the Fediverse - when THAT stuff (e.g. defense of genocide) is seen it tends to turn people off who aren’t used to it or who are tech or culture savvy enough to know how to handle it.

So it does affect you, I promise, even if not directly, and over the next few months will do so increasingly as your instance turns into more of an echo chamber than it has been in the past, as more people block it either individually or at an instance level.

Agreed that many of the users are regular people who are just innocently getting swept up in all of this due to the actions of the admins. Just like users of Reddit were when spez did his power flex moves.

You might want to at least make an alt somewhere else so that you get some experiences that your .ml account increasingly will start to lack.