High on my list of important attributes is an instance that specifically does not defederate from others. If I see something I don't want to see anymore I just block it myself. But I'd rather be treated like an adult capable of making my own decisions about what to see and read. If you're also looking for this I suggest unilem.

I went with Feddit.uk as I am in the UK and it also helps give a more local spin to things because, increasingly, the English-language web seems to default to an American take on things and so going local helps counter that.

Plus uptime is good and the admin has said they will wield the defederation hammer sparingly.

with as much users as possible

Wouldn't this lead to the same problems lemmy.world is having?

I would recommend choosing based on interests, rules that align with you, proximity to where you live, stuff like that. Population is not a problem, you can still participate everywhere because of federation.

I advertised my instance in a different thread. It's been almost exclusively a single-user instance, and I use both LCS and Lemmony to federate popular content. I've been exceedingly happy with it and don't plan on going anywhere, so I figured I could handle a few extra users.

So if your criteria include:

• High uptime
• Federation with popular content
• Sensible rules

... feel free to check my instance out. Do note that so far, I've only defederated from exploding-heads (right-wing trolls) and threads (preemptively, of course).

I'll probably cap registrations at 100 users or so, just to make sure my systems can handle the load, then see where things stand.

If I were to move instance for some reason, my primary concern would be that they aggressively and pro-actively moderate bigotry of all sorts, rather than "both sides"ing it

My three top criteria for picking an instance were:

1. Little to no defederation issues, in either direction.
2. Likely to stick around for the long term.
3. Relatively small.

I'm the admin of mine. Why? Because I enjoy doing, it's in the spirit of decentralisation, and I didn't want to risk being part of an instance that defederates from leftist instances like Lemmygrad or Hexbear. I only intend to proactively defederate from fascist and troll instances, and NSFW to reduce legal drama.

I just went with sh.itjust.works cuz the name was good and they were into piracy. Sounded reasonable.

I started with lemmy.ml because I didn't know what other server to use.

Then I found out that SDF, which I've used since 2000 or so, was hosting its own Lemmy instance. Since I've already been in that community for decades, I migrated my lemmy there.

Beehaw is really nice as well, that is where my spouse, who has zero Fediverse time, joined.

I went with lemmy.one because of privacyguides from reddit, and I liked that the move of actually being serious about the protest by making an alternative to move away from. Very few of the subreddits I subscribed to ever decided to make an instance or a fediverse community, so lemmy.one was what I defaulted to in the beginning. Since then Android has made an instance too, so that'd be my second choice. Anyways, that's how I decided by going with what I was familiar with.

I like having an instance with local communities that match some of my interests. I also tried to find one a little more niche, but not so small as to be run out of someone's closet. And of course, always donate to your home instance. Bandwidth doesn't grow on trees!

On the privacy side, it was also important to me to have an instance that didn't want my email address.

Star Trek is cool

I started on lemmy.world, right up until their "wait and see" approach to Meta/Threads, which is when I moved to lemmy.ml.

Not going to lie though, it also seems like most of the low-quality memes/shit posts come from lemmy.world, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on much.

I initially went with Kbin and Beehaw since it was clear that kbin and lemmy were going to mostly diverge on key features from the start. At the time, Beehaw was getting a ton of traffic thanks to the join-lemmy homepage placing them at the top of the suggested instances list, so there was no real criteria that went into my choice other than that.

Eventually deleted my Beehaw account though, after the admins made it clear they were not prepared for the influx and were being rather dramatic about their defederation choices as a result. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and while I understand their stance was "safe place first, popular site second" it just didn't vibe with what I expected from an open reddit alternative.

Moved to VLemmy after that, and we all know how that went, but my rationale was that it was a growing but moderately small instance.

Afterwards I made 2 new accounts: one on infosec.pub and the other on lemdro.id.

At this point I'm mostly sticking with the Lemdro.id account, since they seem to be offering some very friendly support via their matrix space, and they have some apparently unique changes to backend to make it a very fast and easy to scale instance.

My kbin.social and infosec.pub accounts are mostly just alts gathering dust as a result.

A probably too long post about an entirely different way of viewing things:

I have accounts at... I guess about eight instances. I didn't see any reason to pick one, so I just signed up for everything that looked interesting and promising.

I expected to eventually settle on one, but as it turns out, I actually like having multiple accounts. I have four that I rotate between at the moment. Oh, and with the same username on each, though I still haven't decided if that's a good idea or not.

First, I have a kbin account and multiple lemmy accounts. Even though lemmy has more users, I much prefer kbin just as far as the software goes - it's just a better UI. And Ernest is awesome.

Beyond that though, each instance is a different experience, since the federated communities on each one are different, depending on what other instances they're federated with and which communities from which instances people have subscribed to. And I've amplified that by having different sets of subscriptions on different instances.

Kbin.social has a good mix of content but without most of the botfarm instances. I like that. That's where I do virtually all of my serious posting.

Lemmy.world (when it's up) has a wide range of content, but too much of it, even not counting the bots, is too shallow IMO. It feels too much like Reddit for my tastes. It is the best one to check in on for the most popular topics though, and it's where I'm most likely to be subscribed to communities for memes, humor, drama, pictures - all that sort of junk.

Lemmy.one actually feels like what it is - an instance that demands that users behave themselves. It's nice when I want to just unwind, because it's already the case that problematic instances are defederated, and I have a limited set of feel good subs there. I almost never post from there though, since I don't trust myself to behave.

Lemmy.ninja is my favorite. It's just quirky little instance with terrific admins and an amusing aesthetic. It's little though - 120 users last I heard. That shows in its all, which is fairly limited, presumably just because few people means few subscriptions so few federated communities. That's fine though - it's a selection that matches my interests fairly well. And ninjas are cool.

And I'm still on the lookout for a serious, scholarly sort of instance - somewhere that will be a comfortable home for subs to philosophy communities and the like.

how about an instance that isn’t down like 20% of the time or whatever.

I've been on quite a few. But I mostly was on lemmy.world but their reliability is low. So I switched to Lemmy.ca who federated with basically everyone. Unlike World. I was on .ml for a while too but left for some reason. I'm also on Beehaw, I like it over there but it'll never be my home instance mostly because you can't create communities and they don't federate with most of the ones I like. Being on Lemmy.ca allows me to interact with World and Beehaw from one account which is really nice. They also have really high up time!

I have an account on Beehaw.org because I like their vibe and moderation policy, an account on sh.itjust.works for the occasional community creation (!olympics@sh.itjust.works promo time) and my main account on jlai.lu which is in my country and language.

So my main choice is regional, and then it's based on moderation policies & community creation permissions, etc., while on generalist instances. I'm thinking of swapping sh.itjust.works for a smaller, better moderated generalist instance that still allows community creation.

There's also the niche hobby based instances. Such as the TTRPG, pathfinder, startrek, etc. (There's also mine for books & writing..)

I automatically selected sopuli.xyz because it is also regional instance for us finns.

Lemm.ee is similarly estonian.

1. Local
2. Good rep
3. Active community, admin(s)
4. Open books, accountability
5. Intolerant of racists, bigots, etc
6. Cool domain name a plus

Really only used Reddit for programming related content so I chose to go with programming.dev and it's been the best choice for me to migrate to.

New communities are being added and it's broadened my horizons with a wider scope than what I ever had on Reddit. Obviously some of it is irrelevant but can easily be blocked.

My Mastodon account is on mastodon.sdf.org When the whole Reddit-o-pocalypse went down SDF spun up a Lemmy instance a few days later I asked to join They now have a handful of Lemmy instances regionally

I went with Aussie.zone and have been very happy with it so far.

I take the host my own instance path. It's safer and more stable than relying on a third party.

As a new lemmy user, I made an account on lemmy.world and programming.dev as I am a developer. Still trying to figure it all out but I think making my home base programming.dev since it's I think it's federated with most other instances and my all feeds remains about the same. I mostly joined for the dev communities but also want to mix in some memes and general news so I can follow the goings on of the world

I liked the aesthetic of the lemm.ee domain. Also want a general domain that has the minimum for defederation, getting really just the super problematic ones and ones with illegal content.

i went regional for a friendly region in my main language. It has a comunity for pudus which gives it extra points tbh. !pudu@feddit.cl if interested.