.ml has a lot of pro-Russia, pro-China types and criticism of either country can lead to a quick ban.

Functionally, there is no difference. Both run the same software, tho the versions may slightly differ as the devs, who run .ml, push updates.

For a functionally different experience try Mbin/Kbin (I forget which is the current), or Piefed. Piefed is similar to Lemmy with some quality of life improvements. Kbin/Mbin is a cross between “tweet” style posts, “blog” style posts like tumblr, and Reddit type posts.

From my experience, people in .world are way more open to positive discussion than .ml. Everything upsets .ml if you say the wrong thing or dont post the right way, to make them understand. Its to much fucking drama for no reason.

.world is doing its best to replicate every bad thing about reddit (starting with powermods) while avoiding every positive aspect it might have once had. I'm sure its admins have constant wet dreams about the day they can go public and sell it for parts.

.ml is trying to pretend it's not lemmygrad by putting on glasses with a fake nose and a moustache.

Both are toxic and harmful to the fediverse.

Similar things can be said of most other “big” instances to a lesser extent (including the one I'm in, but I'm too lazy to move out for a third time).

Frankly, the only instance I'd trust to not be politically compromised is fedinsfw, and I already got bit once by lemmynsfw's incompetent management (when they lost control of it to a rogue admin and it closed for months), so I'm not going back there.

Next time I have to move I'll be rolling my own private instance, or quitting altogether.

ML was run by the Lemmy frontend maintainers who drain the blood of puppies for sustenance and wish to kill you slowly and painfully as a source of income.