Considering many of the others that have been defederated. I think it’s kind of hypocritical that Lemmy.ml hasn’t.

So what? If it was wrong to defederate from those other instances then this can be wrong as well

However it’s important to remember that each server is answerable to it’s community and ownership

Or, more accurately, answerable to the appearance of a community and ownership. All of the major instances are heavily astroturfed by various state and corporate entities. Which includes both the United States/West and China/Russia. World is western aligned and ML is not. It’s a proxy war in cyberspace, same as occurs on reddit and Twitter and elsewhere. The solution to such a proxy war is not to cede all ground to the West - such action would not promote truth or critical thought