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I don't think so really. I picked my national instance and here I am posting to a kbin server.

Mostly no. Two of the biggest instances (sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world) were defederated from another major instance (beehaw.org) so you may not want to join any of those three. It isn't a big deal, but I personally like a lot of the discussion on beehaw and lemmy.world, so I wouldn't want to be cut off from either.

It does, to a degree.

One of the ways Lemmy sorts posts is by local. being on a bigger/busier instance will return more stuff there. Also 'All' will return stuff from communities that at least one person from your instance have subscribed, so same thing, more users more results.

Another thing to look for is instances position on defederating other communities, requirements for email/application, etc..

Ideally you will find a community that appeals to you.

I picked lemmy.fmhy.ml without knowing much. I did so because they allowed NSFW without being a NSFW community. I couldn't be happier with my decision

Good luck and enjoy the lemmyverse

It matters to a certain degree. Instances have different rules, cultures and political focus and some have defederated from more or fewer then others.

My best advice would be to look around. Pop in to a bunch of different instances, read through their rules, check and see who they're federated with and the atmosphere in their loyal communities before making a decision.

If your instance is defederated from or defederates other instances, it will limit what content you can see. You can check who is blocking and blocked by an instance here.

Your account, saved posts, subscriptions and communities created by you on that server are stored on that specified server, so if the server goes nuked your account and data are lost too. Moreover, you must respect the instance's rules and options (for example NSFW enabled/disabled globally).

So my suggestion is to join s friend's instance you trust or some common server and not one random instance you find.

It matters in a sense that smaller servers can sometimes disappear (of course any server can) and some servers don't allow making new communities and it is good to check which servers it federates with, i.e. which lemmy, kbin, beehaw and mastodon instances it is connected to.

In the end as long as you pick a reasonably popular server it doesn't matter.

A lot of people get hung up on which server to join throughout the fediverse.

On one hand, it matters because you want to choose one that's fast and reliable, one that has administrators who will tolerate your specific style of discussion (you don't want to get banned, after all). Maybe you want an instance that'll block other instances based on certain criteria or won't block other instances. Maybe you're concerned about being on an instance that is widely blocked. There's also other factors, such as themes and which software is running and whether the software is kept reasonably up to date.

On the other hand, some people think that your instance must fully define you. "Oh, but I like gaming so maybe I should join a gaming instance, but I like sports so maybe I should join a sports instance, but I'm gay so maybe I should join an LGBT instance, but I'm a shit poster so maybe I should join a shit poster instance" -- in the end, you can follow (mostly, subject to instance blocks) the exact same communities from one instance as the others and participate in the same discussions in the same way.

Imo your best bet is to find something that isn't the biggest so you're swarming one guys instance, but isn't so small it'll disappear in a week, and thankfully most of the new instances are pretty chill about defederation so there's only a few instances that are widely blocked.

Myself, I want to run my own services, so that's what's important to me. The experience of running a tiny instance (and so almost exclusively getting my posts and communities from elsewhere) has shown me the power of the fediverse, that it doesn't really matter where you are as long as it works, because it's all accessible from everywhere.

Its important in many ways what /u/0uterzenith didnt tell you.

Privacy: whoever you sign up to also holds your data.

Federation: Some instances are more likely to get Defederated from like Lemmygrad ML , Yiffy and other instances.

your Data : if the instance closes your data is gone ( mostly for you it can exist on other instances but you cant remove / edit anymore )