Hard agree also - and the sign up button on each instance should just link to that randomised list, and people can join from there. Too many people go to “big” communities on the two or three big servers and want to be part of that - its a misunderstanding of how federation works and the UI needs to teach people that it doesnt really matter.
It kind of doesn’t matter, but the moderation policies, local timeline, server uptime/admin skill, blocked instances, and the theoretical longevity of instances can vary widely between instances.
The plethora of “Baby’s First Selfhost” servers don’t make for good Lemmy instances for example, because they are likely to be mismanaged and there’s a good chance they will disappear unexpectedly once the hype dies down in a couple months.
Or another example, you have servers that are essentially unmoderated and full of hate speech and illegal content, or heavily moderated servers that ban dissent and defed liberally, and everything in-between.
Hard agree also - and the sign up button on each instance should just link to that randomised list, and people can join from there. Too many people go to “big” communities on the two or three big servers and want to be part of that - its a misunderstanding of how federation works and the UI needs to teach people that it doesnt really matter.
It kind of doesn’t matter, but the moderation policies, local timeline, server uptime/admin skill, blocked instances, and the theoretical longevity of instances can vary widely between instances.
The plethora of “Baby’s First Selfhost” servers don’t make for good Lemmy instances for example, because they are likely to be mismanaged and there’s a good chance they will disappear unexpectedly once the hype dies down in a couple months.
Or another example, you have servers that are essentially unmoderated and full of hate speech and illegal content, or heavily moderated servers that ban dissent and defed liberally, and everything in-between.