Which instance was a tricky point for me. And then suddenly one of my options wasn't accepting new members (turned out to be temporary). I now have an account that I'm not using on an instance that is semi-blocked by other instances, because of abuse/spam. And I do have an account that I actually use.

I thought I had to weigh:

1. Will this instance be blocked and become useless 2. Will this instance go away because it's the altruistic hobby of someone who will be overwhelmed by users/traffic or graduate in the next year. 3. Is my content acceptable for a topical mastodon? (I'm on mathstodon, is it ok to post about cooking?)

All of these can probably be hand-waved away with "you can just...", but they were a concern to me as an onboarding user.