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.
The name is the reason I picked it. Just for the lulz. And apparently the name was picked by the community, which puts it in the same category as Boaty McBoatface, so I’m not too surprised it’s rather silly.
I didn’t know there’s a reason to pick and can’t be bothered to make another account now, but yeah - I would have picked them based on the name alone.
Do aliases exist in lemmy? Could help having a cleaner name.