I'm not sure of the specifics you refer to, but it sounds a bit like walled-garden-thinking that there's a central authority that can enforce rules. Lemmy is very different in that regard, every instance is subject to its owner/admin and as long as mods operate within what the operator finds acceptable, it goes.
We have a similar saying in my family, but it translates into break one generation at a time, meaning you allow the kids to be lazy while the parents work themselves to death. It is usually used as a dig when someone younger is lazy.
For me personally I just hate that I do not know where to find configs, especially when using a dotfiles repo, it becomes harder than if they're all available under a common path.
Wait, isn't this exactly the argument that Putin uses about NATO?
Not a fan of either, but it feels hypocritical for NATO to call Putin's arguments nonsense, and then turn around and use that exact argument against China.
I think its pretty healthy to always check your assumptions. Some things that are mainstream are actually pretty crazy, but taken as normal because we're used to them. For instance, GDP is a pretty crazy way to measure economic health.
Not so much a niche distribution, but I would like to recommend Chimera Linux, because it combines musl with BSD userland.