> social media takes up a lot of time and energy, also I am wondering whether I should simply not let that go and concentrate on more real world stuff.

I dont see why more people arent doing this. How much value are these places really providing you in your life. I think its mostly fomo. Maybe theres a gem somewhere in there.

I've gotten a ton of mileage out of social media, met lots of interesting people, made friends from all over the world, made start-up investments (some good, some bad), helped people, have been helped by people and in general found that there are interesting stories everywhere. But that was when I was still swimming in time and now the trade-off is different. As I wrote, I'm on the fence, but the value is/was definitely there.

I will say since Mastodon blew up, I've found a lot less need for HN in my life. I'm still getting all the interesting tech news and projects, but I'm not doing battle with crazy fanatics. It's more pleasant, and I probably spend less overall time on it because of it.

Same for me and I was surprised how many people I know were already there. I didn't do the statistics for a while but for the people I follow on Twitter it was 10% on 22-11-06 and 23% on 22-11-29.

Which instance did you choose and why that one?

I've been on mastodon.social for like five years. The choice was entirely practical: I didn't want to deal with server shutdowns or defederations, so I joined the biggest instance which is pretty core to the whole network.

Laughably, this is a very centralizing choice. And now I am starting to feel the downsides: Mastodon.social has a really hard time coping with server load when Elon does something dumb!

Fosstodon and Hachyderm would be really good choices though too, I follow a lot of people on both, and they're well-run by decent folks.

I do think articles hype up the choice a lot more than necessary though. The differences are primarily "the moderators", and most people don't do stuff to get moderated anyways. And the platform includes good tools for changing instances too.

Ok. Thank you for answering!

Not ocdtrekkie and I hope you don't mind me adding my opinion: I'm on my own instance but I don't host it myself and that's what I'd recommend. Your home is your castle.

Just use any of the hosters, set up the DNS record and be done. It's pretty similar to hosted e-mail under your own domain and even cheaper than a Twitter Blue subscription.

Which hoster do you use?

I had heard only good things about masto.host but they had closed their subscriptions, so I signed up with both Ossrox and Weingärtner IT to give both a try.

I have not decided yet which one to keep because they were both flawless so far. I ordered from both at almost the same time and they both activated my accounts almost at the same time about a day later.

Main instance I use currently is the Ossrox one, but that is just coincidence.

I'm not in any way affiliated with any of those companies and don't know anyone working there personally.

Thanks! I'll point DonHopkins at this.

Health and well-being come first. I just wanted to let you know that your comments and contributions are always appreciated!