[jojobas]

>I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another

Who runs the server? On what kind of funding, and how long can it last? Are you served intrusive ads? Are your a customer or a product for the people running this instance? How hard is it to run an instance yourself, and what happens if you suddenly post a video that attracts 10M views?

So many questions, I know, that's too hard, gimme something easy.

[sxg]

At the time I signed up for Mastodon and a server, I didn't consider and wasn't presented with any of these questions/answers or other points of differentiation among servers. I guess that's part of the issue: when an ordinary user signs up for Mastodon, they're unaware of what they should even consider when picking a server. As an ordinary Mastodon user myself, I just wanted to get on the platform and start using it.

[jojobas]

Well signing up for anything important (or anything at all really) you should consider all of that, federated or not (especially if not). Yes, it's a problem that the majority of people "just want to start using it" and wouldn't consider any of the above when exposing, I assume, their lives to strangers.

[sxg]

Sure, on paper we should all carefully consider every decision we make. However, in practice I’m confident the vast majority of Mastodon and Twitter users (including myself) don’t consider using either service particularly important or deserving of more than a couple minutes of thought. From Mastodon, I aim to follow some interesting users to find interesting articles, learn new things, get a sense of “what’s happening” in the circles I follow, and broadly be entertained for a few minutes at a time. I absolutely don’t consider it a critical component of my life and can’t justify spending much thought on it.