I think there are three groups. There’s the tankies that got deplatformed and created Lemmy to have a platform with no corporate owner. There’s the reddit refugees who wanted to get away from corporate controlled social media. Finally, there’s assholes who got deplatformed because they’re assholes. They aren’t philosophically in favor of the freedom of the fediverse, just that it gives them a means to keep being bad people that no one else allows.