i understand that, but think about it - its a random instance from a random stranger on the internet. you don't know that person, and don't know if he is actually serious interested in that project of running that instance.. or if he will shut it down maybe a few day, weeks or months in the future.

and you can't really backup your account and load it somewhere else, so if this happens everything you saved and do is GONE. thats a huge risk if you value your account and contribution to communitys.

so it doesn't really matters to me if smaller instances are not expensive etc.. thats not what fears people (there are still ways to spread users along more instances but more even). its the suddenly vanishing without warning that scares people.

i had this often enough with similiar other projects where i created a account on such a small community / instance, was really active.. and suddenly it was just gone from one second to the next without warning. everything gone. admin didn't told anyone about it.. was just gone into thin air.

so it feels safer to go to instances who are more "trustworthy" in the longterm security of a stable operation.

if lemmy would support export of accounts maybe ever month once or something.. that would change things. also allow spoofing of stuff, but it would help with vanishing instances and people would feel safer on smaller more unknown instances.