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.

Tankieslop.

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.

Probably nothing, lol. I’m already on one of the most blocked and disliked instances and still here after almost 6 years.

Shitty admins or unreliability would definitely drive me away.

Being well run and powered by renewables would be positives for me.

Ooof, a lot of things.

• Github-like uptimes (95% or lower, basically) (yes, I know I’m on SDF’s lemmy, thanks)
• Github-like moderation (“we are right-wing ‘neutral’” and such asses, no Luigi, no guillotines for CEOs, etc)
• Github-like servicing (severely blocking what is accessible to guests or to API use, for example)
• Severe Big Tech dependency / cock-sucking (annoying Cloudflare captcha for example)
• There being flat out better options elsewhere

I only really want an instance to be stable, uncontroversial, and to have a low block/blocked by count (I can filter out for myself what I want and don’t want to see). I’d switch instances if those preferences were not being met to a degree that noticeably impacted my experience using it.

I actually considered switching to your new instance! Just because the vibes are really nice. However, I’m kind of super well established here already

Content is my primary reason for switching from Lemmy.world to Piefed.social. I just wanted access to the pirating comms and I had to switch for that.

Censorship and defederation. It’s a fuzzy, subjective line. I want instances to allow anything non-hate and non-abusive. I will filter anything I don’t personally like.

So far I have hopped because the instance shut down (kbin) and for a better user experience from lemmy to piefed.

If I had accidentally joined a tankie instance I would probably hop off once I found out.

Only thing so far has been shutdowns and slowdowns. Originally joined Lemmy.World. It expanded super fast and started being slowed down, so I moved to Yiffit. Yiffit shutdown, so I moved to Pawb.Social.

I assume admin/moderation issues are a given, so uptime/reliability. I don’t have issue with my instance, but I see a lot of image posts on another instance that I want to view and they regularly don’t load until I try again much later (even opening the URL of the original instance in a browser doesn’t load, so I don’t think it’s a federation issue/issue with my instance). I don’t want to name the other instance as I don’t like to bad mouth what are almost certainly volunteers, but I do wonder why people haven’t abandoned posting images to it due to reliability. Maybe the posters aren’t aware.

Me getting too busy to maintain my own server 😅

It shutting down. Or me stop being lazy and finally run up my own instance.

I don’t use Lemmy as part of my personality so I don’t care who the Admins are or what the perception of a user is based on a domain.