What made you pick the Lemmy server you are on?

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.

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

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

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.

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 chose lemm.ee because:

1. Its admin @[email protected] has been working hard at improving the instance's performance and fixing issues.
2. It has been relatively smooth and performant since the infrastructure upgrade.
3. The domain name is cleverly satisfying.

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

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

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

1. Googled "Lemmy" to see what it even is
2. "wtf is an instance"
3. 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.
4. 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."
5. "sounds good enough", created account

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

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

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!

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

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 the admin :p

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 joined lemmy.world because when I first signed up it was still quite a bit smaller than lemmy.ml. I heard that new users should try to make lemmy grow horizontally by joining other instances. I guess joining world wasn't the best choice for achieving that in retrospect 🙂

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'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.

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

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

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 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.

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 wanted a server that had fast posting and browsing

Then I learned that some of the larger servers aren't federating with each other, which made me happy I went this route

https://wirebase.org, FYI

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 🤘

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

It was after the u/spez shit AMA. Wanted Beehawsomething but saw they were restrictive and I had to give a detailed reason to join them, so I didn't. Sh.itjust.works seemed like a website name I would not remember and I wouldn't be able to go too Lemmy.ml was full and we where invited to go to other places Lemmy.world was there and had a nice name, it was for me Now I discovered only 2 days ago that slrpnk.net existed, and If we were able to move instance I would move there, I vibes a lot with the ideals I discovered on Reddit, they even got me to buy plants I take very good care of

I created it myself.

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

I'm a dirty hippy and this seemed like a server for other dirty hippies

I was going to choose sopuli.xyz but you need to give them a reason to why you want there and I never heard back from them and logging in does nothing, so I assume I was not selected. I say it would be fair if there was some message to go f myself so that I wouldn't be held in eternal limbo.

So I chose lemmy.world as it's a general purpose instance and immediate registry.

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

I don't think it really matters, but I picked vlemmy.net because it wasn't too big. I figured that the bigger ones were staring down the barrel of a huge influx in traffic, so I wanted to avoid them.

I didn't see any evidence of the admin being shady, but also wasn't too hasty with the defederate button.

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

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"

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.

.... Because I own it

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

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.

When the ship of r/piracy sailed from the reddit docks, this where we landed next.

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

The first I tried was Lemmy.ml. I applied and didn't hear back. So I joined Lemmy.world and registered immediately.

Surprised I'm not seeing any other self-hosters in here. Having seen the de-federation drama, it's nice to know that I can federate with anyone I want, regardless of if they are federating with eachother.

Obviously it comes with the administration side of things, but I really don't mind.

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

I picked lemmy.world because it was recommended and had a large userbase. I know Beehaw defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjustwor.ks, so if you want to interact with that community, that could be a consideration against, but since the user population across all of Lemmy is currently increasing dramatically, I think everything's a bit of a moving target regardless.

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

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.

Wanted to be on a reasonably big instance, since I figure they're more likely to stick around in the long run. Lemmy.ml was closed for registration at the time (might still be, idk), and plus I have some disagreements with the admins, so I chose lemmy.world. I'm pretty happy here and don't see a reason to change personally, although the server's getting pretty overloaded recently so we'll see.

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

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.

A subreddit I was in linked their lemmy community and it was on dbzer0 so I created a account on there and called it a day.

Like most commenters here, because it was recommended and I'm a newbie at this.

Question though, if I create another account on say lemm.ee, is there a way for me to migrate my subscribed communities?

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 :)

•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

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.

I own it, hehe

Was the most upvoted comment on "how to get started with Lemmy". Also, some of these other places have super strange names, I get that it doesn't matter but when you know nothing it gives bad vibes.

First I made one on ml. Then I made one on kbin because everyone said ml was a bunch of tankies and had some shady shit going on. Then none of the apps supported kbin so now I made one on world. Lol and I have no idea which one between world and ml I'm even posting from right now since I'm logged into both on liftoff

My first account was on lemmy.one but then I stood up my own instance to learn more about Lemmy.

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

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

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.

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.

I found beehaw first, so I started there but then discovered that the admins manage the community creation there. So I made a new account on lemmy.world to mod that, and most browsed with my beehaw account. But then beehaw needed to de-federate from lemmy.world, so I made a vLemmy and lemmy.one accounts so I could interact with both beehaw and lemmy.world.

tl;dr As someone else mentioned, finding a smaller, low-profile instance to have your home account but interacting with other instances seems to be the best approach

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

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

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

Shorter domains the better I say! (usually)

It doesn't really matter actually, but I would prefer to stay on the one with more members as it will probably last longer than other instances

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

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.

Biggest German server and good community.

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

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.

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

I was planning to sign up at BeeHaw because it seems pretty active and with high quality discussions. When I heard that it had defederated from Lemmy.ml and Lemmy.world I decided not to sign up to any of those three as I would rather have access to all of them (though I can understand why BeeHaw defederated). So I just went with VLemmy.net as it was one of the recommended ones (on join-lemmy.org and the Awesome-Lemmy-Instances GitHub) and seems to be very broadly federated.

I don't think it matters too much, though I think if you were signed up on the same instances as all your favourite communities it would be a bit more convenient.

I'm with the boys on lemm.ee !

Es ist Deutschland hier!

I chose vlemmy.net cause it seemed neutral, general, and was one of the recommended ones. So far so good.

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

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 picked pawb because furries know tech really well, so I can trust the server to be fairly reliable.

I read some comments that lemmy.ca was well run to the extent that it was being recommended even by non-Canadians. Being Canadian myself, that was good enough for me.

It's a friendly instance and is well-run. The admin manually approved registrations which kept them safe from the great bot invasion and is now upgrading the server and bringing on more admins.

I googled Lemmy and signed up to the first result, not knowing what instances were back then.

Idk, because why not Estonia.

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)

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

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.

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.

Trans, pan, 196, and Blahaj is friend.

Literally just picked the biggest one to maximise the content I see

Rn it matters a bit, wont in a few weeks tho i think

I am hosting it lol

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

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

One of the few only lgbt friendly servers

On the day I signed up, 18.0 was rolling out and lemmy.one was the only one that worked on Jerboa. I wanted to try out the different apps and see what worked well so that was where I started. I also have an account on lemmy.world but I don't think it's necessary unless there's a problem with lemmy.one. might still use another server if I can create my own community there.

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

Its status on federation with problematic instances.

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

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.

I tried a few, at one point a few weeks ago I thought I would stick with lemmy.world because (then) it wasn't the most popular instance and seemed to have good resources... but then it became the most popular instance and got defederated by beehaw (and I was subscribed to a few beehaw communities). So I signed up to feddit.uk just because I'm from the UK and it seemed solid. I think if you have no strong niche interest then picking one made for your region/country is a pretty good bet.

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

Lemmy.world was the only server where I could make an account during the busier days of reddit immigration.

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.

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

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.

it was canadian

Others did not exist back than.

I joined latte.isnot.coffee because its description said it was specifically for Reddit refugees. I'm a little worried it may be run by pro-CCP tankies, though.

It doesn't but I thought it did

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.

Because I'm a furry. obligatory OwO

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.

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.

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

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:

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

I picked Rammy for the name and the sidebar:

Just another Lemmy instance. We've got a cool mascott though! Open to everyone.

Why trust some Big Tech corporation to host your data when some random geek can do it? All thanks to the power of the Fediverse!

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

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.

Because it's a furry instance

I want something spread out from a maint instance, and is relevant to me, so I went with Midwest.social. I also knew about their mastodon track record, which helps me feel secure knowing it's a good instance

I added an account to a few geared towards specific community types. Then I can easily switch accounts and view local.

I'm considering standing up an instance for this type of thing myself.

I signed up with lemmy.ml originally, but then it was a little hugged to death. I couldn't update my community, couldn't post pictures or anything and I kept getting errors. I tried Beehaw but you can't make your own community and that was a no go for me. Then they defederated.

I went through the list that was only like 10 servers or something at the time, found slrpnk.net which had the vibes of the subreddit I run and found a new home for NoLawns. The guy who runs it seems pretty cool when I had to reach out to him so I've made it my home.

I did also just make a kbin the other day to see what that's all about too but with no app (yet there's a few in the works), I've stuck here.

I was on dataterm.digital, I loved that server, but they went down one day and just never came back up. Sometimes I can still hear it SYN ACK

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

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

I owned a funny domain

Ideology!

Saw Lemmy.World and Kbin mentioned on reddit. I alternate between the two but increasingly am on Lemmy.World more.

I don't remember the instance I am currently on, but I do remember that the main Lemmy instance I found was probably too full with people performing a mass exodus to it.

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.

The TLD.

as a Greylag goose i flock to feddit.uk

I saw a local instance for new Zealanders and joined.

lemmy.world because it was top recommended. In the future I might change to either host my own or use my wife's ex-husband's instance.

It does seem like some servers have specific niches, so if you're really interested in a specific servers niche using that instance would prevent you from having to sync those communities with your instance.

I'm new, so someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Lemmy.ca felt like a natural home as an IRL Canadian resident. I like the variety of content and the moderation seems good so far.

The domain name. And the community seemed friendly enough. Now with the Reddit exodus, I'm glad I migrated to a smaller instance.

For some reason I couldn't join lemmy.world and few other popular instances, be it because of technical issues, load, idk. I joined sh.itjust.works because I wanted to check fediverse before I commit to host my own instance, which I probably will at some point.

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

Because RIF recommended it

Because of nationality

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