this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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I mean, in my very first comment in this thread I suggested it might be time to suggest another general-purpose instance to newcomers instead of .world in order to alleviate the load and not subject new users to the instance that's being DDOSed frequently, so I don't know where you got the impression I am suggesting everyone should dogpile onto the largest instance.
New users, particularly coming from Reddit, want a reliable instance because they are used to valuing their account. It's great that you're not, and with Lemmy de-emphasizing Karma there is less reason to be attached, but telling someone "go here, they're run by reliable people" is an easier sell and a smaller culture shock than "who cares about your account, if your chosen instance goes dark just make a new one!". Especially since existing subscription migration tools require the original instance to be online to work. Re-creating your subscription list if your instance suddenly disappears will be bothersome and definitely take more than 10 minutes, and demanding people to set up multiple accounts for redundancy right off the bat also gives a very bad impression.
The other thing newcomers care about is easily accessible content. A reason to pick an instance like lemmy.world, lemm.ee or lemmy.sdf.org is that they're already connected to most communities thanks to their large userbases. This makes navigation easier and makes the All page behave like you would assume.
The most important thing for getting new people on board is a smooth onboarding process where they can start interacting with Lemmy content in a familiar way as soon as possible.
Later, when they're already in the ecosystem and have an idea of how it works, they can explore other instances and maybe move to one that suits them better. I've seen it happen many times already.
I'm trying to tell you that there may not be many smaller instances left to move to if the large ones gets all the users.
You make fair points otherwise but the difference between us is that I would like hundreds of servers around, and I don't see that happening if all new users end up on the largest ones.
Anyway, time for dinner here. What will happen will happen. It's just a shame I think.