I think the point touched on by @Eyekaytee@aussie.zone below is one of the best ones. Being federated with ML, like Hexbear and Lemmygrad (only the last of which we have defederated already) innately exposes our users to some of the worst the site has to offer in terms of pro-authoritarian bias.

Ask anyone who got over the technical hurdles and questions like “what’s that? Why should I use it? How do I make an account?” and started using Lemmy, but then left and stopped engaging why they did so. One of the top two reasons (the other being the amount of content) is probably about the amount of tanky bias and the poor behaviour of tankies. For example, this is one of the most recent posts on the subreddit for Lemmy wherein the same admin I was complaining about above doxed a user who disagreed with them.

If we want Lemmy to grow and be a good place for our users and prospective users, we need to, as @trk said, not tolerate the intolerance which is the default position on ML.