Fediverse

One additional point that also influenced my personal choice was the political stance of the Lemmy developers (tankies and holocaust deniers).

I think this post eases my concerns. As long as they aren't silencing or influencing conversations in the code, what does it matter? And you're right, the open source nature of it makes it even less of an issue.

Mastodon integration feels unpolished, but I‘d rather have it than not have it.

Fair preference, I am glad you find it useful. Personally, I just don't think "tweet" style posts mix really well with link aggregation. It's a very different use case for me and I'd rather use Mastodon when I need to use that kind of social media.

I think that voting on kbin is private now, by the way.

No, click on the "more" button under each post -> activity -> favorites tab.