If the registration process just picked a random instance for you, maybe something nearby, and assured new users that they can visit communities and interact with users across instances, very few would pick the biggest instance.

[–] _cnt0@feddit.de 16 points 1 year ago

That isn't guaranteed, though. The other day I wanted to create a new community and was browsing instances on join-lemmy.org/instances for an instance that was compatible rulewise. The one I picked evidently wasn't a good pick (burggit.moe). Trying to advertise my new community, I found out it was defederated from beehaw (and likely others) and got insulted as a pedophilia sympathizer ...

Randomly assigning new users to instances would make a substantial fraction of people very unhappy.

[–] StringTheory@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

I would be very sad if I was randomly assigned an instance in French (for example) because I don’t speak French.