After spending a few days learning about lemmy and other fediverse websites, I was curious about people's processes for picking a server that is right for them. I've seen most posts say to pick one that is not too big or small and that has similar interests as yourself. But if we are all mostly federated, doesn't it make the most sense to join the biggest or likeliest server to stay around and federated with the most other servers? Then you can just travel to the instances you share interests in. I chose this instance because you could just sign up and be in it, and that was all I needed to check things out. And although I found many communities in other instances, even if let's say all of my subscribed communities are on other instances, doesn't it make sense to just stay here so long as they are federated with sh.itjust.works? It may be too early to know for sure, but it seems like this instance is going to stick around for the foreseeable future, why risk joining the smaller instances that might not be here for long. Also, if you have subscribed communities in several instances, I assume you have to follow all the different server's rules. I'd be curious to hear other people's thoughts in regards to picking a home instance.
Edit: Are there any restrictions to interacting with communities on other instances?
I was referring to low admin interest. For example if you did allow a few users on your server, then you grew bored of it and shut it down, they would lose access to their accounts. But running a server just for yourself honestly sounds like the best option if you have the money for it.
I guess I just can't see the connection between a server being small and how that could make you more likely to lose interest in running it. Maybe there's something to be said about a large instance's duties to its users, but I don't have any reason to think an admin of a particular instance won't shut it down from over-taxing their pocket book, or just not wanting to deal with the thousands of user issues a large instance will bring over a smaller one. I'm not trying to change your mind or anything, that's just how I see it.
If you're technically inclined it can be super cheap. I'm paying $6 / mo for a VPS that's way more than capable of running a single user instance and I get to host a lot of other things on it as well. See here, though not all are on the VPS in question.