Content? Politics? Community? A cool integration you’re looking for? Maybe even a cool domain name? I’m not looking for tips as an instance owner, lol; I’m just curious.
Edit: I’ve gotten a lot of push factors, what about pull factors?
Unreasonable moderation.
That is to say, I have no problem with reasonable moderation or following well-established rules, but if there comes a point where it seems that the admins and mods are abusing their power, then I would probably lose trust in their leadership of that instance.
I left .world as I felt the communities there were too toxic.
Cool domain name
when one shuts down.
It getting replaced by piefed
I stick to Mbin when possible. Mastodon or crust.piefed.social for generating RSS bots. Mastodon also if I want to post heavier files in size. NeoDB if I want to post reviews. Lemmy if I want to post stuff for nicher instances and I happen to have an alt on, or if I want to crosspost posts no longer available externally but available locally.
Mbin I prefer because it integrates decently enough thread posts and microblogs while, unlike alternatived, not being visually bloated or as slow to interact.
And when it lacks some feature, it’s one of the better and more responsive ones to either emulate or redirect to an instance that supports the given feature, either by Ublock Origin filters, Violentmonkey scripts, etc.
So historically I chose kbin over lemmy because I liked the features better and once I was on I like how passionate and productive earnest was with it. Once he left it kinda left mbin so I went to an instance that was philosophically don’t block anything or defederate at the instance level unless necessary (legal) but mbin compared to kbin was kinda maintenance mode. piefed came up with the same kinda energy as kbin and that is what got me to move to that and .social was kinda the main instance. I have toyed with moving to an instance that is more default allow everything but its kinda tough mainly because what is limited is stuff I would block as a user anyway more than likely. So the only reason to really go is strictly philosophical. I want it to be me who does it or at least have everything easily reversible at the user level. Then also I think an anime instance has communities that are private so you can only get them if you are on it. Not sure if other instances have things like that. nsfw is kinda tempting as I really would prefer more in my all thread. Nice to see boobies here or there and if anything is to gross just block the communities. I don’t scroll at work though.
Features:
For me, the features of an instance was a major factor. This is the main reason why I switched from a Lemmy instance to a PieFed instance.Polls, combined communities into feeds, comments from all crossposts in one post, multi images in posts, better integration with Mastodon users, scheduled posts, tags, flair, blurring of spoilers, etc. All good reasons to use PieFed instead of Lemmy.
As far as hopping between instances of the same software:
Content:
I usually prefer instances that give the end user more control over the content they want to see. That means minimizing the number of instances blocked (as much as reasonable) and more federation. Piefed.Zip would likely be the next instance I’ll hop to.Privacy:
.World instances actively block VPN users. So that’s one reason I would avoid them for future hops.Politics:
In general, only if the admins block/ban users based mostly on their political beliefs. I try to avoid factoring in whether admins have political beliefs that match my own. There will always be things that people disagree on, and everyone has their own lines that they have drawn on how far they’re willing to support others based on their own beliefs.What matters to me is that an admin can treat others fairly, even if they disagree on politics.
Domain Name:
Usually not a factor unless it’s something absurd.Shitty admins or unreliability would definitely drive me away.
Being well run and powered by renewables would be positives for me.
