I think what you got mixed up is the software side and moderation. You can use the same software as .ml and have nothing to do with it. It’s called instance and there are many. This isn’t just front end. There are different front ends (apps, web, …) as well but that’s a different story.

You are on pawb.social as you most certainly already know. That’s hosted and handled by different people than .ml. It’s just the same software and the software isn’t the problem And since the software is free, no one profits from it. As an instance, it can choose to federate with .ml and even if (as my instance does, don’t know about yours), there is no guilt by association in my opinion. Being federated means you can see their content and they see yours but yours is moderated by your mods alone.

So they technically aren’t forks since the software is the same but they are still handled by different people because they are exact copies software side. I hope that makes it clearer.