I joined the fediverse a couple months ago, before the reddit protest started, admins of lemmy.ml were asking people to join smaller instances because they were being overloaded.

So an instance with less than 500 users was the parameter I used to choose, that instance was lemmy.world lol, look at where they are now.

I created a second account on lemm.ee only a few days ago for various reason, being populated wasn’t one of them :)

with as much users as possible

Wouldn’t this lead to the same problems lemmy.world is having?

I would recommend choosing based on interests, rules that align with you, proximity to where you live, stuff like that. Population is not a problem, you can still participate everywhere because of federation.

You have to right to do what you want, people criticizing your choices are those who are confused about what free speech really means (hint: it’s about the government, it doesn’t apply to private entities).

Free speech means they don’t arrest you for what you say, it’s about the government, not private entities.

Private platforms are free to do what they want, free speech rules don’t apply to them.