It's a mixed bag. Some communities on lemmy.ml are awesome but all the news related ones tend to be tankie circle-jerks. The mods over there are usually hands-off so I am surprised OP got banned.
The problem is that there actually is an extremely loud minority actively flooding the place with pro-Russian, pro-China and anti-western news articles. They will usually follow up with hostile comments pushing additional misinformation. (.ml/usa is a good example.)
They are so active, I suspect they are a contracted troll farm. I have no proof, but it's still highly suspicious.
Strangely enough, I haven't been banned from there yet and it's not for lack of trying.