lemmy.world seemed reputable with a straightforward domain name, and no out-of-the-ordinary policies.

I chose programming.dev because i am a programmer and developer.

I have four!

Beehaw was my first, when I joined it was 3rd or 4th most users, but had just been upgraded (per a pinned post) and had a cool community vibe. This was like a few days pre protest I think?

Lemmy.one got made on the first day of the mass Exodus, and beehaw was STRUGGLING. I knew the mods were a small team and the server wasnt able to keep up so I went to a less populated instance.

Reddthat.com is new and I haven’t used it yet, I went there because it seemed middle of the pack, and I wanted to have an account where I create a community.

And then lemmynsfw is for…actually, I miscounted I only have three accounts.

lemm.ee said it was newcomer-friendly and I was a newcomer so bingo bango there I went. I suppose I can always join a different instance if I need to but I’m still just getting a grip on this place so I’m good for now.

I actually made my home in the one hosting a previous reddit community I was fond of, just choose one u like.

Randomly came across mine. Was gunna join a larger instance just for testing, but it was right as the big Reddit rush was happening and my signups kept failing.

So I went with this one.

lemmy.world is more open and performant than lemmy.ml and Beehaw.

I just picked lemmy.one mostly at random, but also in part because it advertised itself as well regulated but also not heavily populated and thus prone to crashing with the recent influx of reddfugees.

Seems to work okay, but I can’t create a community without admin approval and the instance also disallows downvoting, and I’m not a big fan of that at all, but I’ll give it a while longer and see.

I’m still finding it a challenge to find the balance of communities that interest me I used to have. There’s an awful lot of meta chatter about the site itself from new users that, while I understand, gets rather annoying when it takes up the whole feed. So it’s definitely an adjustment, resulting in me using it less than I did my old haunts, but in the meantime I’ve gotten a lot more reading done than I used to, so I’ve got that going for me.

I was told it was better for load balancing if we didn’t all use the same one. So I just looked for one that had easy signups and didn’t seem overeager to block stuff. Apparently, some from this instance come form /r/china. I’m not, but I do drink coffee. Anyway, I think it’s working out so far; better than reddit anyway.

Lemmy.ml re-opened registration but I had problems signing up. Lemmy.world seemed like the next best option.

Joined sh.itjust.works since it’s located in North America, has open registration, and the admin sounds like he knows what he’s doing running a server. I’ve stayed 'cause it’s been stable and I like the admin’s vibe. It and lemmy.world seem to have become the main large “general purpose” instances since they both have open registration.

I also have an account on kbin that I’m not using much at the moment. I think that site has lots of future potential, though.

I joined mander.xyz because it has a central theme around the natural sciences. It could possibly include STEM content as well; there is an ongoing discussion about it. The admin(s) are present and very responsive.

For anyone with a love of science and/or nature I recommend it highly as a home instance of Lemmy.

I chose kbin, loved the integration with mastodon

feddit.dk. I wanted a regional instance as my home instance, because they tend to be chill with controlled growth, while also having native language discussions. My country didn’t have a Lemmy instance at the time, so I picked the closest option. I love Denmark and they don’t seem too annoyed by my presence (yet). Thanks for having me 🫶🏻 🇩🇰

i moved over to lemmy.world after i heard somewhere that lemmy.ml was run by a tankie and had been censoring proof of the tiananmen square massacre. idk if it’s true or not, but I didn’t wanna take any chances.