Why are people joining .world to begin with? The entire point of this is to decentralize. Joining the by far largest instance beats the entire purpose.
Join smaller ones like lemmy.one, lemmy.club, lemmings.world, lemmy.zip etc. We might need to start specifically recommending against .world and for general purpose instances like those.
Also, funny how even reddit allows r/Piracy but not .world lol
Perhaps have a system of selecting randomly from a set of hand-picked general purpose instances at sign-up, where having less people gives it a higher chance of being picked (if it's of at least a certain size of course, to prevent spam etc)
The issue is not about the implementation, but the filter: which criteria do you use to select instances that are eligible for the pool of instances? I'm genuinely asking because I think it takes some time to have a look on instances for people to make the best choice.
In all fairness I applied to 5 Lemmy instances when the Reddit downfall started, including .ca and .world. .ml to date is still the only one to have processed my application. It may have been due to lots of applications at the time but the sheer fact my application is still pending on the other 4 instances leads me to use the one that actually works as opposed to the first one I chose.
Because they have no basis on which to decide where to go. It's like buying toothpaste but there are hundreds of options, none of which you know anything about, so you get whichever seems most popular. It minimises the risk of ending up with something which is unpopular for good reasons.
Joining the by far largest instance beats the entire purpose.
There's kind of a tension here between Lemmy's design and what makes most people join social media websites. Most people want the biggest, most centralized website.
Some people were forced away from Reddit and don't subscribe to that idea (yet?) - maybe they will understand that after being here for some time, but I know when my reddit app stopped working I just wanted something to fill the void
If you join a small instance, the chances are higher that it will a) be poorly maintained and b) fold quicker, forcing you to find another instance to join and re-subscribe to all your communities.
I run my own instance that technically does have open registration, but I can't really recommend anyone actually sign up to use it. It's not running on very powerful hardware, and my commitment to keeping it running 24/7 is "as long as it stays convenient and interesting." There are probably many, many of those. But there are a good collection of second and third tier instances now as well, I'm not to worried about .world's popularity so long as they don't do something like switch to a federation allow-list rather than a block list.
I'm aware of the risk, but so far the captcha seems to have prevented any mass sign-up, and none of the few other existing accounts so far have any activity. That said, since I have no intention to support a user base anymore, I probably should close it anyway.
I think it still has highest number of posts and comments per day or something? It's no longer the highest number in terms of users, but there is some basic metric of activity where hexbear still is quantifiably at the top. But anyway you're right about the quality, that's what's important.
Also, don't put all your eggs in one basket: diversify, diversify, diversify. Make a main account, but have more on at least one other instance. Instances go down for maintenance, software gets updated, owners change moderation policies, so on. If you can't get to Lemmy through your main, use your secondary.
Personally I use lemmy.sdf.org as my secondary. It's run by a bunch of retro-enthusiast Unix nerds who more care about the functionality of the tech than anything else. No blocked communities there, and AFAIK they haven't defederated from any instance outside of ones that were hacked/compromised. That does not mean you can just go there and be a shitbird though, they do have standards.
Everyone should leave that instance, the admin and the mods on that instance are big time thought police and will find excuses in their vague rules to delete your posts and eventually ban you if your views go against the grain.
I don't disagree at all but I can kind of understand why a lemmy instance would block piracy communities. Reddit has many millions of dollars and a squad of lawyers to back them up, lemmy admins don't.
why? because it feels safer to join a big and longer lasting instance than a random one with almost no users. such small instances can vanish from one day to the bext. i once created a account on such a small instance and not even a week later it was wiped from earth, taking my account with it. so it's no wonder people chooser rather bigger instances.