there’s no feedback mechanism that will result in the promotion of instances with better moderation

the federation system is inherently unstable - there’s a positive feedback loop where the instance with the most users attracts the most new users. new users have no to way to gauge the quality of moderation of an instance, and neither do disgruntled current users. additionally, members of smaller instances are less visible, which is an incentive to join a larger instance.

“what instance?” is a rhetorical question, and the only possible answer is “never heard of it.” because there is no means by which a user could have become aware of other instances, regardless of the quality of those other instance’s moderation