What made you pick the Lemmy server you are on?

Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad as well as tech.de (or something similar) I might host myself sometime later. I was on mastodont a while before , went back and tired of proprietary again. This time I am thoroughly fed up and will stay.

For me defederation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I'm to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.

I'm on sh.itjust.works. Not gonna lie, related to that name naturally.

Exactly the same for me. Choosing an instance based on values, content, or location is so lame. I chose my instance based on the funny name.
- Although sh.itjust.works democratic moderation is pretty based.

Googled "Lemmy" to see what it even is
"wtf is an instance"
Checked some of the most used instances. At this point I wasn't sure if it matters much, but I just figured it's best to just pick a popular instance.
found lemmy.world, and the description goes "The World's Internet Frontpage - Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use."
"sounds good enough", created account

There is several of factors you should consider:

Does it have a healthy amount of users: between 1k-10k users are probably the sweet spot right now. You don't want too many users because it will cause performance problems. And instances with too few users has too many unknowns.
read the rules see if you agree: servers can have wildy different rules ranging from no NSFW to no downvotes. If they don't have any rules that is a red flag too. You want an active moderation so the instance doesn't get run over by bots.
Does it look low effort: check the banner, how the announcement formatted.

That is probably all the basics

All that matters is you shouldn't recommend the already massive overloaded servers like lemmy.world when lemmy isn't even optimized for this sort of traffic on a single server yet, and those large servers are having issues because of it. The entire point of decentralization is to spread out and still be connected.

Recommend smaller general servers that have been up for years and also upgraded for the surge of users, like lemmy.one, lemm.ee, or vlemmy.net

For others...
If you're Canadian lemmy.ca has also been great. There is an application but I was approved in less than 4 hours answering the 4 simple questions.
They've also recently rejigged the administration and just upgraded to a brand spanking fast server this canada day
- Lenny.ca wouldn't let me visit a lot of communities though

I created it myself.

Consider this a test to see if the federation works :)

It does!

I registered during very early days, so I signed up for the instance run by devs because there wasn't much choice. Today I would choose a smaller one

Feddit.de because Deutschsprachig and I loved Reddit, but would love to see a successfully federated version of it.

I'm on Feddit.de because it was recommended to me by join-lemmy.org and I like to have a server that has a German speaking Focus in the local feed.

I'm on lemmy.sdf.org because it's widely federated and run by a trustworthy organization.

I'm not much of a tech bro - in fact I struggle with troubleshooting basic Linux issues. That's why I mostly interact outside of my local instance.

I hardly engage with the techy discussion on SDF, but I appreciate the high quality user base.

I'm also on SDF. They've been in the business of offering free computing resources to the public since the 80s. So I feel confident that they won't close up shop due to lack of expertise or resources.
- I was going to come in here and praise SDF but I see I'm too late
  Damn you Dark Souls Remastered for taking me away from Lemmy for a bit!
  I guess I'll link the FAQ for SDF here for anyone interested in learning more
  and also mention that SDF runs a Mastodon and Pixelfed instance for all your federation needs

I chose lemm.ee because:

Its admin @sunaurus@lemm.ee has been working hard at improving the instance's performance and fixing issues.
It has been relatively smooth and performant since the infrastructure upgrade.
The domain name is cleverly satisfying.

Did you know that .ee is the Estonian tld? Estonia in Estonian is Eesti. Sunaurus is from Estonia and runs the c/Eesti community. The Estonian language is one of the few living relatives of the Finnish language (a member of the Finnic language family).
- Thanks God
Yes. I realy enjoyed this instance so far. I joined during the black out protest and first looked at lemmy.me, but they said they had performance issues and didn't realy want any new sign ups. Just scrolled for a bit and stumbled upon lemm.ee, with a beautiful welcome message and another massage how he upgraded the servers. Just new this was the way to go. Such a nice owner, who actually cares how our experience on this platform is.

Lemmy.world here cause it seemed to be one of the top guns, and thought it mattered in the sense that I would see more content. But after learning about the fediverse I'll most likely host my own instance soon 🤘

Same thought process here, but the performance issues I was seeing on lemmy.world prompted me to spin up my own instance right away. So far it's been excellent performance-wise, but not quite the same as being a user on the instances that contain the content. We'll see how it works out!

I'm the admin :p

Same

I'm a dirty hippy and slrpnk.net seemed like a server for other dirty hippies

Idk, because why not Estonia.

I didn't know what I was doing so I chose at random.

Ditto. Can't downvote on mine, apparently, but honestly that's probably better for my mental health right now. It's teaching me to just move on from stuff I don't like, instead of pretending the little burst of negativity encompassed in my downvote actually accomplishes anything meaningful for me.

I chose Aussie.zone cause I'm out of touch with my own country so seeing the news here is nice and cause I thought it would be easier to join a country instance.

Also optional email and I know I could make a temp email but I can't be bothered.

I joined the one hosted by my country's community. The community is really great.

Made one on lemmy.world but it's crumbling under the pressure as we speak. Tried a local one, but it has like 5 users. Don't trust it to live long enough. So started using the star trek one, because star trek. Not as if you'd need any other reason

Yeah it does kinda matter, which is problematic for onboarding new users. Personally:

I read the rules/TOS.
I checked the Instances page to make sure instances I wanted to access were linked and not blocked.
I looked for any introduction posts to see what the backend infrastructure was like.
I checked the username I wanted was available.

It should not be that complicated, but it also has to be unfortunately. I had to make sure all those things matched what I personally wanted. This much choice is great for heavily-invested tech nerds with free time but sucks for anyone else wanting to join in.

The Admin of my instance (discuss.tchncs.de) is tolerant but understands the tolerance paradox. (Defderated with exploding heads but not every left instance - doesn't fall for false balance.

Also he was fast with approving new accounts.

I got approved today 20 mins after verifying my email. It was a pleasant surprise

I'd heard you shouldn't pick one of the largest, I explicitly didn't want a server run by Nazis, Paleolibertarians, or Marxist-Leninists, and I didn't mind the rules here.

It doesn't but I thought it did

I like the short and aesthetic of the domain name lemm.ee

Shorter domains the better I say! (usually)

Went Lemmy.world because I had no idea how any of this worked.

Gonna stick with it for now, because there isn’t really a reason to switch. In the future I might switch or host my own.

Country, I live in The Netherlands so I searched for a Dutch hosted instance with Dutch owner.

Tried lemmy.world as a reddit refugee but with the performance issues they're experiencing, quickly went looking for another instance with better performance and a decent amount of extra content. Lemmy.ml is blocked at work (.ml TLD is freenom so prone to abuse) and registration is closed anyway, so decided on lemm.ee.

Far better speed, a good amount of content locally, and few/no errors at the moment.

Exactly the same. Created an account on Lemmy.ml about a month ago but can't login today. So I created another account with the same username on lemm.ee just now and it works fine.
Lemmy.world got a lot more usable today. Idk if they addressed issues with resources or enough people left and went elsewhere. I definitely experienced some initial frustration I also made an account at lemm.ee but I have been sticking with my first dot-world one for now.

Biggest German server and good community.

I saw people complaining that the admins were communists and I was like dope, I love those guys.

Plus healthy number of users (maybe too many actually) and local communities

Don't worry about the too many users, commies are excellent reducing excess population

I picked sh.itjust.works because it's Canadian and the domain name is nerdy enough. It seems to be a decent instance, although I'll move if I stop liking it.

Does it matter? With all of the defederation drama, I think it does. If your instance is quick to drop others, it seems like you'll lose content.

AFAIU we're still federated with some of the douchier instances and I appreciate seeing their memes and posts. Not because they're entertaining, but because it's easier to understand the asshats. When they creep into racism/phobias/hate I'll be fine seeing them go.

I didn't realise that one was Canadian as well. It did love the name as it vibes with my exact feelings as I've explored lemmy instances and this whole concept. Endd up at lemmy.ca as that .ca domain just sold it for me
I also chose it for the renewable energy server.
And it's fun to 🛑 conversations that devolved into American politics BS, and remind users this is a Canadian instance.
Maybe voting takes a while, but I view it as the Japanese government in Shin Godzilla.
Doing things the right way takes longer and can be painful sure....but marathon vs sprint.

Because I'm a furry. obligatory OwO

The one I use doesn't block other instances, although I probably will block the same instances and people that big instances already block, I want to be the one to make that choice and shape the content I see.

Because of nationality

The list of blocked instances made me switch from feddit.de to the current instance I'm using.

Can you explain?
- Feddit.de blocked many instances which is some kind of censorship in my point of view. So i switched to another instance which gives me full access to lemmy.

It has the word world in the name, sounds bigger.

I chose Lemmy.world, because it was the one I was hearing the most about. It's a bit slow at the moment, but that's not surprising, given the amount of new users. So far it's been fun. I really hope more and more people show up!

Feddit.uk - I figure regionality has benefit in keeping loads more spread, plus it hosts some good communities and a cute name.

Lemmy.world because lemmy.ML recommended it when I tried to sign up there. I’m considering moving to a smaller server though since this one seems to be getting overloaded.

Yea, for whatever reason, lemmy.world became the sort of de facto "main" instance, which isn't a bad thing and lemmy.world isn't a bad choice at all, ruud AFAICT is a dedicated and experienced fediverse admin.
There may be issues to centralising the user load too much. I don't have the technical knowledge to back this up, but it probably makes sense that there is such a thing as too much for one server to handle. If it has to handle all of the user requests as well has syncing all of the large and popular communities that a "main" instance is likely to host, then it's just a lot and probably requires technical solutions and investment beyond what one admin/team is willing or capable of doing. Plus, lemmy the software may not be designed for that sort of load, which probably requires a distinct architecture from that of a smaller instance.
So it probably, at point at least, makes sense to spread the load of both the users and the communities. However, it seems that redditors as accustomed to a "central" and singular service as they are have kind of opted in to re-creating a central "main" instance like they're used to. It may very well be a bad habit, as it presumes that there's just some giant server and a dedicated tech team sitting there waiting to scale up at a moment's notice. Of course, lemmy.world are free to halt sign ups and encourage users to pick other instances. But it remains to be seen how lemmy, its software and the fediverse/threadiverse in general handles communities/groups/magazines at this new scale.
In the mean time, intentionally spreading the load might help. As would donating to the developers and your admin!!
Same, feeling really slow for me

lemm.ee because of speed and latest version of Lemmy. Less problems, good experience 🙂

I'm in Canada, so I'm using and supporting Lemmy.ca

One of the points of using a distributed system is to not centralize the userbase.

I also have a account on lemmynsfw but that's just for research purposes.

Gotta support the '.ca' anyway we can! Underutilized domain imo

Google search. I had no clue about multiple instances. Search lemmy on Google and first link was for lemmy.ml domain so that's how I am here.

Its status on federation with problematic instances.

Well, I started my instance so it only makes sense that its also my home!

As for why I started an instance, I've always liked self-hosting stuff as its been one of the best ways I learn how stuff on the internet works, even more than I have learnt from doing some programming in my spare time. So it was an obvious move for me since I wanted to know more about how ActivityPub worked.

Originally I wasn't really planning on having open registration on my instance (otherwise I would've picked a better domain name, a bit late for that now) however as I saw Lemmy pick up pace, and the larger servers were starting to have issues, I figured that the best way I could give back was at least offer to share the load.

I like the subdomain name.
- Oh, thank you! Maybe it wasn't such a bad choice after all then!

I chose lemmy.ca because I'm a proud Canadian patriot 💪🇨🇦🫡

Same here. Just seemed like the right choice.

So I joined lemmy.world because I use to be a user of reddit is fun, rip, and in their going away message they mentioned .world. So I joined that instance not realizing how the fediverse works.

Overall what I've seen is the instance you join determines your "front page" since by default it will be set to show local communities. Other than that subscribe to any community from any instance then set your front page to show "subscribed" or "all" and you get your basic Reddit experience

I'm with the boys on lemm.ee !

.... Because I own it

I decided I felt better selfhosting it rather than being on anyone else's instance

I owned a funny domain

Because it's a furry instance

I have has a journey through a few instances.

I first applied to Lemmy.ml because I was interested in open source. I also applied at Lemmy.one and Beehaw because they were recommended on join-lemmy.

I got accepted at Beehaw. Then they defederated from Lemmy.world and sh.it. Stayed on Beehaw for a while but found a few communities on world that I couldn’t join, so decided to sign up to world.

World was having performance issues and I realised I could no longer interact with the Beehaw communities and people I had started talking with.

Then found lemm.ee I like the name, it hadn’t been defederated by any other instances, had good up time, was on the latest Lemmy code, and the admin seemed to know what they were doing, so joined that one. I don’t see myself moving again any time soon.

Because RIF recommended it

Heard lemmy.ml and lemmy.world were being overwhelmed.

I signed up at Redditthat.com as it was listed as a recommend instance. I didn't want to overcomplicate the choice. If this instance doesn't fit my needs, I can still create another account somewhere else.

I am hosting it lol

The name of the instance made me laugh.

Es ist Deutschland hier!

lemmy.ml because when I joined I had no idea of how the fediverse worked. I'd change it to a smaller one but it really doesn't matter much I don't think.

Ideology 🙂

Bouncing between several since lemmy.world is being hammered right now, I'm sure once the dust settles things will calm down. Right now I'm on infosec.pub because it was recommended to me as a smaller server. It really doesn't matter so long as whatever you're on communicates with everyone else.

It's kind of a pain when different accounts have different subscriptions. Do you know a good way to sync them up? (Either a one time import or continuously)
- The easiest thing to do is open one account's subscriptions in one browser window, the other account's subscriptions in the other, then work through them. It doesn't take too long but I wouldn't want to do it very often.

I run my own private instance so I am in control over my own data.

Tbh, I don’t think it matters what server you choose. Lemmy.world, Lemmy.ml, and Beehaw seem to be the big ones so picking a server that federates with those would be ideal.

When I got started on Lemmy, there were only a handful of instances and they were all general-purpose. I went and made my own so that it was exactly what I wanted.

These days, I'd probably use a list like this and choose an instance that isn't too big with a cool domain name: https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

Trans, pan, 196, and Blahaj is friend.

I want to be in control over my own data. So I spun up my own instance

I choose lemmy.world because it let me create an account nothing more. When RIF closed up, they suggested Lemmy, so I popped on. I am sure it will be a while before there is a lot of content, but I can be patient. I do hope that Reddit enjoys the fruits of the bitterness they've sown. The Anti-social network.

I’m in Kansas City so I joined https://midwest.social 😄

it was canadian

Was?
- oh it still is but it was a few weeks ago too

Initially made an account with the instance opened after my country's subreddit made the shift, but on Jerboa trying to look at other instance content was really rough.

So I joined here since I enjoy the content, and raise the black flag every so often.

Decided to go with a smaller instance from the start, as I think we can all see what happens when one entity holds too much power within an ecosystem.

Also wanted to go with one that was not defederated from other instances (nor defederating others as well). Checked a bunch of lists, and decided to go with my current one.

It was nearby geographically and the guy running it seemed to know what he was doing from a technical aspect.

The final update message given out on RIF suggested Lemmy.World and so, here I am.

Does it matter?

As I have found with a few niches I've been looking for and only found communities on other instances, it may matter. I can see this post even though I am on Lemmy.World and not Lemmy.ml; but some of the other places I've wanted to look at are not federated with Lemmy.World or are semi-private and require manual authorization by an admin before you can do anything; and they can't authorize a user that doesn't interact with them somehow so I had to make a new account for those instances.

I picked Lemmy.world because I wanted a fairly large one that will likely maintain support.

It's the first one I found and many others were filled with germans and I said "Nein"

Tried the bee but did not get any notification I was accepted. Fortunately saw programming.dev pop on my feed and they accepted my request.

Good thing as well that I found all of my favorite programming languages on the server.

I'm into general instances and also a long time user of Fediverse, so I know 10-200 user instances work best. That's why I picked the first one with not too many and not too little users (the join-lemmy page only showed 50 new users when I registered, damn)

Lemmy.ml was requesting people register on other instances, and lemmy.one stepped up to fill the void.

But when people ask me what instance to sign up for, I tell them lemmy.world. it doesn't really matter, but being based in a bigger instance reduces the friction of finding communities.

I was looking for a lemmy instance that would let me create communities, downvote if I wanted to downvote, and that would take care of troublemakers without being too overly restrictive.

I also wanted to ease the burden on the very busy lemmy instances that were being overwhelmed by the reddit Exodus.

It seems I have found a place. The SDF has a very long history of serving several communities in the internet and Linux world. I first ran into them decades ago, and they are still here.

Lemmy.world didn't require/disapprove my application!

I wrote in the beehaw application that I'd contribute empathy, humor, comments, and memes. I feel like a rejected tinder date in denial, "maybe their servers just have a lot going on right now"

I signed up with beehaw first, but realized that they were defederated from lemmygrad, which I wanted access to. As I became more acquainted with lemmy and started looking into the "flavors" of the different instances, I joined lemmy.ml because they are unapologetic communists and won't defederate with lemmygrad.

As an aside, it's fucking insane to me that lemmygrad is so controversial yet there's crickets about exploding-heads and people are happy to be on instances that don't block them. Cool

Everywhere I've seen has been defederating from exploding-heads.

Ideology 🙂.

Ideology!

Mod of a subreddit I was following created an instance, its was the easiest choice

it was the only one when i joined

Not seeing anyone mentioning lemmy.one and I'm starting to think I made a bad choice.

I'm here! I read some disappointing stuff about the creator of it, but I'm not on Lemmy for the personality-worship. If it works, that's all I need.
I'm hoping it eventually allows downvoting and community creation, but I understand leaving that out at least while it deals with the waves of new users.
Edit: Adding context to remove vagueness of the "stuff" - https://www.privacytools.io/guides/jonah-aragon-privacyguides-failed-attempt-to-takeover
Fellow .one resident here. Love it.

•Lemmy.ml - Signed up here first, was recommended to it as a general place to sign up to

•Lemmy.blahaj.zone - Egg memes, blåhaj memes, just memes

•Lemmy.world - Handy for extra world news communities

•Lemmynsfw.com - Do I need to explain. This is under a different name, but I've kinda used that name over on the other place and I'm slowly bringing my content over (plus new stuff)

I only use one and four regularly

You know that you can follow your desired communities from other servers, all with e.g. the lemmy.ml account?
- Afaik, lemmynsfw requires you to be logged in to see nswf content. In other words, you can't easily view it from other servers.
- Some like to keep their dirty from their public identity
- Yeah, but there's at least one community I've found that's on an instance that have defederated my main, so what I posted there the other day gained zero traction, and only found out the reason last night (re-found the community through Mastodon and couldn't see my own post). So having alt accounts for those edge cases is my thinking
  Plus I post sightly different things on my nsfw account compared to this one 🤣

I have two. I have this one (lemmy.ml) as my broad-access instance. My other is lemmygrad, but as that is a bit more widely blocked I keep this one still. That one is used for most of my politics, and this one is my more general interest. It's kind of nice to have different communities died to different user registrations.

As to why those two in particular, I am a Marxist-Leninist so...yeah.

I made my first account on lemmy.ml because it had a commitment to free and open-source software with a focus on privacy.

Picked it for the name, stayed because of the community. A lot of super nice folks here on sh.itjust.works.

My main one is on lemmy.ml and I'll admit it was just the first one I saw. My second one is on lemmy.blahaj.zone in case something happens to the dev instance.

I have a few now just to test it out. I want to use feddit.nl as my standard server, but I just haven't fully figured out how this all works.

Like for example I'm on lemmy.world and subscribe to something, that channel/sub doesn't seem to appear on feddit.nl. there can be a channel with the same name but it isn't the one I subscribed to.

do things from your home instance, so once you find a community on another instance you want on your home instance, go to your home instance and search !community@other.instance eg !asklemmy@lemmy.ml and itl will pull in a few posts to start off, if you subscribe to that remote community hen your home instance will keep on getting posts.

I joined lemmy.ca because I like to keep a diet of local news and a place to avoid American influence. I like using my local feed for well the local stuff and then my subscriptions for all the niche interests that the Canadian community couldn't sustain alone.

I joined lemmy.ml a while ago because following cool opensource projects is my jam.

A friend owns it and it has a funny domain. Bonus of it being smaller is that it didn't have any performance issues yesterday/today.

Signed up this account on .world because it was quite small (lol) but seemed competently run. This decision has not worked out great!

Had my other account on Beehaw so after that whole debacle I had to migrate. Moved that one to lemm.ee because again small and competently run. It's worked out much better over there, people seem to keep flocking to .world for whatever reason so lemm.ee is staying nice and manageable (for now).

I wanted an instance specifically for Australians... so I made one 😀

Doing great work mate!

I joined Lemmy a few weeks ago when a lot of other reddit refugees were making the switch. A lot of the servers were overloaded, so I just went ahead and hosted my own. My instance is never overloaded because I'm the only user, and because Lemmy is federated I can subscribe to communities on any instance I want.

Set up the server myself. For me, that’s part of the fediverse experience.

I'm learning german so while i was looking for some german speaking communities. They're surprisingly big and keep growing.

Gekoloniseerd

I saw a youtube video that said lemmy.ml was full so you can't join. I just picked a random one that wasn't ml so I chose lemmy.world

Even lemmy.word, at least for me, was difficult to join. I have a hard time to log into the account I have created there. I think we must understand this is not redit, the platform is fundamentally different how you approach it. The fuller the server gets, the more difficult it gets to get into your account.
- I wonder if it'd be possible to setup a registration server of some sort instead of only picking instances manually? Ideally it'd know if one particular server was near capacity and could direct new user registrations to another.
  I have no idea how this sort of platform functions, just spitballing.

Others did not exist back than.

We're old. 👴
How to you feel about "us youngsters" barging in here and bringing server performance to its knees? (sorry!)
- I feel great, since there wasn't much content before and it wasn't getting better.
  I would like to have instances that are small, and big ones too.
  So I welcome you all, and hope we will be able to make this space nice and long lived.

I've got accounts on 4 different instances just to see what things are like. Sometimes I want to see all sorts of posts, sometimes I want a feed of just LGBT-positive stuff, sometimes I just want to get off, different accounts on different instances for different things :)

Would you be down to tell me what the LGBT-positive and getting off instances that you like are? Asking for a friend 😉
- Lemmy.blahaj.zone and lemmynsfw.com :) Happy browsing

Is there really a difference between the different servers? I just browse all (It's lemm.ee btw)

Well there are different rules on different servers, for a start. Which ones they're federated with can potentially make a big difference.
And then of course if you're just relying on All, you'll miss out on stuff that a bigger server might see because nobody from yours has subbed to it yet. But that's sorting itself out over time, and you can always speed up the process by making sure to regularly do a trawl for new interesting communities to pull in with a tool like lemmyverse.net/communities. Absolutely not a reason to sign up on a big server, just a reason to be more proactive if you're on a smaller one.
- Wait... ugh, someone needs to make a cute little graphics animation to explain this shit.
  I'm on lemmy.ml. When I choose to see "all," is that just listing communities that other users on lemmy.ml subscribed to?? I thought it listed content from all other servers connected/federated with lemmy.ml??

IDK

I chose mine because it disallows NSFW on its own communities and takes a hard stance against defederation while not being defederated. I want to have more control over my feed and not be isolated.

I chose lemm.ee because it came highly recommended and rightfully so. Great management and great communities too

Why is it highly recommended? And do you know where it is hosted?
- It came highly recommended because it’s a fast server under food management. I have no idea where it’s hosted 😊

Lemmy user for a couple of days here. I jumped on lemmy.world because it was big and the name suggested it was universal and open, it had open registration and allows nsfw content.

I suffered through the technical issues many of us experienced, but everything seems much better and smoother now (maybe because they were able to fix the issues, or maybe because enough people left because of them, I can't say!)

Does it matter what you use? Yes and no, I guess. Apparently the last few days performance issues were mostly local to dot-world. I did make another profile on lemm.ee and I noticed the different instances seem to show different feeds with some different content, but also many of the same posts from the same communities as well. I'm still trying to figure out how they decide what they show in their feeds. Something to do with federation, I guess, but I'm not pretending to understand the meaning of that concept yet. Given that instances can choose to federated or defederate, it seems like it must matter to some extent what instance you are on even though content can be shared between instances.

Basically, you saw different posts on each instance's local feed because they dont always federate with the exact same servers, one may be blocked on one instance or not yet discovered
it does matter what instance you're on when your instance starts getting defederated by others - so far i know a lot of servers defederated lemmygrad and explodingheads for political extremism, and beehaw blocked shitjustworks and lemmy.world because of bots

Was initially on lemmy.zip because it seemed really chill and that was such a cool instance name. I had no problems with it whatsoever but I realised it didn't block out certain instances that I disliked (aka lemmygrad). Now I'm on lemmy.fmhy.ml and I'm loving it so far since it had everything I needed:

Blocks out lemmygrad
Allows talk on piracy and NSFW content
Loads better compared to the more overpopulated instances
Wasn't very restrictive and was very welcoming (didn't even ask me for a reason for joining)

I tried to find a server that isn't blocking anyone, and hasn't been defederated by any of the big servers.

I want to avoid an echo-chamber and have access to everything on the fediverse, including stuff I find distateful. If anything really bothers me I will block the community/instance myself, I don't want others making that choice for me.

Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of folks out there just searching for an excuse to clutch their pearls, rile up a mob, and defederate anything and everything that offends them.

I don't want to circlejerk in a safe space echo chamber, I want to see both the yin and the yang of humanity. I want that wild west feeling of the internet of old

I shall inform you of a secret. There are some big servers around that don't defederate anything and aren't defederated by anyone. :) that's all I'm saying, it's up to you to find the treasure.
- Is there any way to see who is federated/defederated, and from whom?

I went for what I believe to be the bigger one, because it might get a higher quality of support from third parties, and still be here after a year.