The politics are so bad that I think people should stay away from Lemmy period. It's like saying it's fine to create a Xitter account these days as long as you stay away from politics.

The developers of the platform are tankies, but instances other than lemmy.ml and Hexbear are more normal. Left-leaning, yes, but I also unsub from politics communities and have a block list of a few words (you can probably assume what those are) to prevent those things from getting through.

I hardly noticed, and I've been on Lemmy for nearly two years. I think it depends on which instance you sign on to. But a) you can filter out certain topics, users and even entire instances from your feed, and b) you can always sign up to a different instance if you still feel annoyed for whatever reason. For example, I left lemmy.world when it turned into some sort of Reddit clone.