have a tool “choose an instance for me based on my location / interests”.
https://join-lemmy.org/ kind of does that, but the results can be a bit off. I just tried "Technology", and the first result was lemmy.today, which is fine, but doesn't defederate anything, so maybe not the best choice for a new joiner.
In the past I used to only link to one instance (sopuli.xyz), but since the whole jury nullification story I thought it would be better to have both a USA and Europe servers.
That's a good resource for people wanting to learn how it works behind the scenes. Most people don't want that, they just want a link to click and see what the platform looks like.
The one issue with Mbin is the lack of mobile apps. I know there is !interstellar@kbin.earth, but Lemmy really is the best in that regard.
I joined reddit some time around 2015 and it was not exactly the most welcoming experience with the type of content you see by default either.
I think the main issue here is that Reddit in 2015 didn't have to compete with modern Reddit. Nowadays, you create a Reddit account, you get a few subs suggested depending on your interest and your geodefault, so that's enough to give you a first tailored experience without being first drown into All content.
We can't really replicate that on Lemmy (hopefully one day we will), so the best we have is what I listed above: tell people they should focus on laid back communities.
I have my main alt there. It's pretty good, but there was an issue with the thumbnails that got resolved a few days ago. Also, the instance is much smaller than the two others (64 users per month), so I sometimes have to subscribe to some medium-size communities before nobody did before. Federation can get a bit clunky at times too, and I have to pull myself some posts or comments to "unclog the pipes".
Discuss.online has 140 users per month, sopuli 496
It was the first comment of the thread, to encourage discussion. If there's something Lemmy could use more of, it's a bit more discussion rather than fewer comments
https://lemmy.world/post/24487031