For me it's been like a splash of cold water to the face, remembering just how fucked up 
tier liberal takes were, are, and will likely continue to be.
I'm sure there's downsides to complacency, but it was nice having some ground assumptions when going into a thread, like "society can and should be improved somewhat" or "the ruling class acts in its own immediate self interests and any other claims regarding their motivations are propagandized lies" or "climate change is real, it's bad, and it's getting worse," or more trivial stuff like "Tesla cars aren't good."
I'm sure potential comrades are out there and while it really is necessary to reach out to more people at some point (offline too, orgs especially, but while we're here, you know?), it's been sobering to realize just how far rightward mainstream "progressive" liberal thought really is on average. 
I think it's good to see that there aren't any calls from Hexbears to defederate from this or that instance, unlike the other instances which can't seem to handle our politics mostly. Pretty disgusting to see some of the shit they make up for excuses to defederate, calling us bigoted, or Trump supporters etc. We have to deal with their actual holocaust denial, casual misogyny and ableism, and their smug liberal superiority complex the accompanying racism and you do see us talking about pulling the plug over it?
Fuck it, we need to dig our heels in and not go anywhere. The lemmyverse is a communist project- if the people using it can't even tolerate leftist voices being heard, they're the ones who should fuck off.