Too many people are confusing the two. Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid, people go “Lemmy is getting worse and worse,” or “I’m leaving Lemmy,” or worse, “I’m leaving for Beehaw.”
If you’re using Beehaw, then you’re using Lemmy. Lemmy is the software these instances run on. If you don’t like lemmy.ml, join another instances that have rules that match your philosophy. Some instance hosts authoritarian or fascist shit? Turn to another Lemmy instance. Lemmy.ml is not even the biggest instance. People who just joined and are unfamiliar with the platform will just think the entire Lemmyverse is run by autocratic admins if we don’t get our terminology right.
I have never cared about reddit karma. According to someone in reply to my saying I’ll be gone July 1, “You have over a million comment karma. You’ll never go, you live here.” Well, all it took was an easy link in Plumbing for me to find and join my fellow Lemmings. I agree it should be an easier and clearer process to join, though!
I have accounts as far back as when Reddit became public and probably millions of karma across them. I eventually started cycling though new accounts every year to leave old baggage behind and get a fresh take on the place.
Karma and accounts are meaningless and karma was a nice way to trick your mind into valuing them way more than you should.