this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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While most Lemmy and Piefed instances are not tolerant of hate speech (sexism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, etc.) disguised as 'free speech', most other rules are enforced at the community (subreddit) level.
In terms of picking an instance, I wouldn't recommend lemmygrad.ml, lemmy.ml, or hexbear.net due to their extreme views. Of the remainder, I recommend choosing one from the Lemmy Federate list; those with auto-add (not discuss.tchncs.de, among others) automatically federate new communities to ensure they are searchable.
For maximum access, I also wouldn't recommend choosing instances that are defederated from at least one other major instance (beehaw.org, lemmy.world, sh.itjust.works, lemmy.dbzer0.com, quokk.au, anarchist.nexus, feddit.org, and lemmynsfw.com; fedinsfw.app is new and seemingly not defederated yet from major instances, but might get defederated by non-NSFW instances).
Taking the above recommendations into account, this leaves us with the following Lemmy and Piefed instances with over 250 or 100 monthly active users:
[Lemmy] (250+ MAU)
[Piefed] (100+ MAU)
(tap the Lemmy/Piefed links to view the full lists)
A key point of differentiation between instances is which instances they choose to defederate; this controls which instances you're able to find content from. You can use the Federation Checker to find this list for any given instance.
Ultimately, review the policies and focus of any given instance to find the one that suits your preferences best.