Personally I’d recommend picking an instance that at least has Hexbear and Lemmygrad blocked, as that removes 95% of the toxicity you’d see on the platform. You can check what an instance blocks by scrolling to the bottom of their main page and clicking the instances link.

Sopuli.xyz is a really solid medium sized general instance, with good admins and an updated lemmy.

Lemmy.cafe is a nice small instance (not much local activity, so you’ll need to rely on the All view and your subscriptions for that one).

If you have affinity with Anarchism (or environmentalism or sailing the high seas), Slrpnk.net and lemmy.dbzer0 are both excellent.

But if you’d like a more themed instance that appeals to a particular interest, by all means go for that instead. https://lemmyverse.net/ or the instance finder tool at https://join-lemmy.org/ are good places to find one. :)

also @[email protected]

hexbear is objectively the best instance once you learn how to not be a liberal on there. best community, best vibes, best memes

I notice you’ve gotten suggestions to steer away from them because of toxicity. They’re toxic to transphobes and imperialists. People who consider themselves on the left get absolutely enraged at being criticized morally from the left. Look behind anyone complaining about them and you’ll realize they said some wild shit and got rightfully scorned.

https://lemm.ee/ is generalist, second biggest instance, cool admins, federated with almost everyone

Lemmy.zip is a bit more techy, but very transparent: https://lemmy.zip/post/27236300 also federated with almost everyone

If you look for instance defederated from hexbear and lemmygrad, there is https://sopuli.xyz/ and https://discuss.online/

https://reddthat.com/ is nice too, but disables downvotes