Yeah I think Beehaw have a clear ethos and want to protect that. I think the misunderstanding is from the new people influxing into Lemmy/Kbin (me included) - they don't have to be a part of the wider Fediverse. They're big by the standards of Lemmy/Kbin when people arrived so people are suprised that they don't seem to "want" a big influx - they were expecting them to embrace redditors and want to be the new reddit. They understandably want to be able to moderate their communities and that's difficult with the current tools. They may also want to screen their users which may not be ultimately sustainable in a federate model.

Beehaw will continue and succeed in it's aims but it's probably not going to be a big player long term, but I don't think it wants to be the mass choice. Lemmy.world and Fedia.io / kbin.social at the moment seem like more likely bets long term as they're embracing the growth, and analogous communities to big familiar Reddit communities are being created which will be clear places to go for future influxes.