https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
Lemmy.ml, like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, has consistently been accused of improper Federation practices and many instances have decided to ban one or both of the latter by default, with many individual users having already gone further to block the former as well. However, many individual users on lemmy.ml seem unaware of the accusations of the practices of their admins, and some people go so far as to see lemmy.ml as a sort of default instance on the Fediverse.
This discussion promotes wider knowledge of the situation and what might be done about it in the future, in order to e.g. not turn away new potential Federation members (Fedizens?:-) that could otherwise associate what happens on that instance as something relating to the Fediverse as a whole.
your home instance doesnt necessarily need to be a behemoth as you can subscribe to all the same stuff. ive got a dozen or so users at moist.catsweat.com who primarily consume lemmy content
The one issue smaller instances have is that the All feed is much less populated as communities only show up if at least one user of the instance is subscribed to it.
Not a dealbreaker of course, but something to be aware of.
that's a huge dealbreaker all I use currently is the All feed
Which is why all the instances I recommended you have a large number of users (lemm.ee even has more monthly active users than lemmy.ml: https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/)