Yes, I was hit by this downside as I signed up for Mastodon.se, a big and seemingly "safe" (as in not to be suddenly shut down) general interest Mastodon instan

Yes, I was hit by this downside as I signed up for Mastodon.se, a big and seemingly "safe" (as in not to be suddenly shut down) general interest Mastodon instance used by tens of thousands. Well, and so it happened that some other instances began defederating it because it allowed members of any political party to join it, not blocking far right users. The admin didn't have resources or interest for such a kind of political moderation despite where no freedom of speech was being violated to boot. As he just ran the instance as a hobby project, he had to shut down because he lost interest when his instance was drawn into negative light. So BOOM and tens of thousands Mastodon users had to migrate instance. The problem now was that you try to learn from past mistakes but realize that many other large instances aren't that transparent about funding models and how willing they are to work with these issues. You have alternatives but most others are also just "some guys who run this instance and provide a server for a community". I don't think I really bounced back to Mastodon since then even if I did migrate. But it didn't feel the same when we were on this shaky ground.