I've seen this raised quite often and, to be honest, it was kind of true in the beginning and that's probably where the opinion came from.

Ultimately, software like this is free and open to everyone; even those we don't agree with. We're going to have to come to terms with that fact because our own freedom rests upon it. There were going to be authoritarian left servers at some point, it just so happened to be at the beginning. There are also going to be authoritarian right servers if there aren't already. The software doesn't discriminate but it also doesn't discriminate against anyone else.

As for optics, I think all you can do is focus more on the beehaw community or whichever community you want to promote. This post was written to capture the spirit of the community if you need some inspiration. Some might not be convinced and that's okay, we just need to convince enough of their friends :)

If it really matters, suggest Kbin too. We can interact with Kbin magazines and users so Kbin's success is Lemmy's success and vice versa.