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At the time I joined Fediverse - knowing little about it, just like you now - it seemed to make sense to choose Mastodon.social. I thought it made sense, because it was a large instance and had a generic theme of “social”, and my account then represented mostly the Humane Tech Community (since then it has become much more my personal account).

Knowing what I know now, that choice was not good. I should have chosen a much smaller instance. The smaller the number of fedizens on an instance, the more the instance’s theme makes sense. A small instance forms a real community. In very large instances this community appeal erodes, becomes meaningless.

Also, of course, large instances should be avoided because they are kind of a re-centralization of something that should stay decentralized (compare Gmail vs. email).

I will probably move to fosstodon.org or floss.social or something similar. That is still a Mastodon instance. To maximize diversity of apps used, I would love to move to a Pleroma instance instead (also Pleroma has some nice features, and is more lightweight on a server, saving energy). Problem here is lack of interoperability. I cannot migrate my account to Pleroma and would have to start from scratch. Also Pleroma does not currently have instance that look appealing to me (might self-host, but I have little time or incentive for that).

So your choices now might lead to network effects and FOMO later on :)

what platform are you using? (Mastodon? Friendica? Pixelfed?)

Mastodon, Misskey, Peertube, Pixelfed, Plume, well Lemmy… i also used diaspora but that’s a different thing.

which instance? And most important question: 3) why/how did you choose 1 and 2?

In one way or another, you soon will learn that diversity is key in this enviroment, and experimentation is required, now i am mainly on floss.social but i’ve been in many different instances since 2017, trying to look for the right place.

My first instance was an 100% free speech one, and moderation was for the most part nonexistent, very isolated to begin with, and the content was… well, what you’d expect, so i migrated.

Used two more instances for a long time but i have accounts in many others, and i finally settled down in floss.social. I follow for the most part developers, cause i’m interested in what they do, mostly GNOME devs.

I’m on snabelen.no for norwegian politics. This is my primary account to interact with other content.

Hosting kaskjer.space for posting what is happening in stavanger.

Uploading videos on video.ploud.fr. Looking for a place to migrate to though as the instance isn’t thematic.

I watch peertube content from tilvids.com, tube.rebellion.global and watch.breadtube.tv.

Using lemmy for pitching ideas about digital issues.

Write.as for longer posts in norwegian.

Otherwise, I’m interested in instances about some of my hobbies.

1. Mastodon & Lemmy only. I occasionally but rarely check out PeerTube 2 & 3. For Mastodon, I picked a relatively unknown instance cuz I tried and didn’t like the big ones. I based my choice from my initial perceptions of the admin, and it turned out to be a great choice. Most importantly for me is that it’s stable and well-functioning. Only downside is that the instance only partially supports searching toots.

I recently installed a Mastodon site as a pro-gun social network. I’ll probably be adding Lemmy and Friendica as part of an ecosystem for people who are pro gun but also for people who might fall into the category of “progressive Republican” or “social libertarian” so that we can have an alternate social network that isn’t filled with alt-right dipshits. Ruqqus is currently having a far-right struggle session because several of their equivalent of subreddits got banned.