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 matters a little.

To be able to see the rest of the fediverse (i.e. all the other Lemmy and KBin servers) your home server must be operational, and must “federate” with them.

The admins of each server can decide how much of the rest of the federation (i.e. all the other Lemmy and kbin servers) you can and cannot see. They could choose to just allow everything - however, you will quickly find yourself swamped by abusive and bot accounts. They could also choose to allow nothing, limiting their users to just the one server. Neither of these extremes are optimal, so the admins have to decide where they want to draw the line.

If you are able to find a server owner whose interests, or at least their philosophy, aligns with yours, this will give you the best experience. For example, the server I’m on (lemmy.blahaj.zone) is heavily moderated to create a safe space for LGBTQIA+ people.

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.

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 )

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.

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.

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.

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.

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