What are your criteria for choosing an instance other than Lemmy.world?

Hello everyone,

Based on the recent instability of Lemmy.world, a lot of people have been wondering whether they should move to another instance.

I used to look at https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list and recommend people to pick a generalist instance with as much users as possible (using the 1m column), usually

• lemm.ee
• sh.itjust.works
• sopuli.xyz
• lemmy.one
• reddthat.com
• etc.

Of course, there are also the regional options

• feddit.de
• lemmy.ca
• aussie.zone
• feddit.nl
• feddit.uk
• midwest.social
• etc.

And of course, the thematic instances

• programming.dev
• lemmy.blahaj.zone
• discuss.tchncs.de
• lemmy.dbzer0.com
• etc.

I used to recommend the most populated instances, as we know that All depends on users subscribed from the instance.

However, now with the introduction of the Lemmy Community Seeder (https://github.com/Fmstrat/lcs), which

tells your instance to pull the top communities and the communities with the top posts from your favorite instances

do you think this should still apply? I have seen promising instances (high uptime, already on 18.4 that was released today)

• discuss.online
• lemmy.ninja
• unilem.org
• etc.

Would you recommend users to join those as well, assuming that the admins use the LCS to populate the All feed? Most of us remember the Vlemmy.net disappearance, and it's difficult to tell users to join small instances based on good faith, but at the same time, every instance needs to start somewhere, and they should be given a chance.

What do you think?