Since this was a question about a lemmy feature, I'm talking lemmy here, arguing about fediverse, TCP/IP or electricity numbers/servers/plants doesn't seem usefull in this context. Providing a link to a server that to your knowledge (you provided the reason) hosts illegal content can be seen as participating in this crime or at least advertizing. (Disclaimer: I'm no lawyer, I just remember whole BBS being seized for providing lists of (international) phone numbers to BBS that hosted warez and there's stuff that's worse than warez).

There are a few different things I'd like to mention:

• I don't think, that there is such a thing as a massively defederated instance exists right now. The most blocked instance is blocked by about 11% of the instances, followed by two instances at 6%
• Even if the die hard scene users would know their instances, not every random troll or spammer would.
• This doesn't address the possible legal issues of publicly announcing where someone could find illegal content
• If "small queer instance" refers to beehaw... That's the second largest instance there is as of today according to https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

And lastly: If you're new to the fediverse you maybe shouldn't run your own instance in first place. Helping reckless people pull reckless stunts is a bad reason to promote a feature.

Currently it isn't and I don't think, that this would be the best idea ever since it could be misused as some kind of index to find bad instances. The defederated-list is available to the public and thus the defederating instance could in fact be "advertizing" the instances they defederated from ("Look, we don't want this stuff here, but these instances are for [right-wing|transphobes|bots|spammers|porn]")...

Depending on where the instance is hosted or where the admin lives, it might even be illegal to in fact point people to places where they can find certain things.

Let's pick 2 of my current characters...

First there is Winter, a Tabaxi Warlock in a Strixhaven campaign, who's full name roughly translates to 'Starry Ice Night' ('Sternenklare Eisnacht' in German). It's the only character in the party that doesn't have a Strixhaven background and originally from a small mountain village on his home plane. Since it's still first year, he's still processing the whole school stuff, all these people and that strange idea of learning from books. Even back on his home plane he preferred solitude over the 'crowded' village and spent his time hunting and forraging through the mountain forrest. One day he noticed a man fighting a unicorn. Since you just don't fight unicorns he shot the man in the back without much hesitation, landing a brilliant shot, triggering a magic surge that knocked Winter unconcious. When he recovered he found himself eye to eye with a very angry unicorn who explained that they hadn't been fighting but were in the process of binding the man to unicorn as its champion and that right now, unicorn was one desperately needed champion short. Seeing that Winter could potentially grow into that role, unicorn persuaded winter to step in, made him a warlock (aka champion) and sent him of to a school he never heared of on a plane he didn't knew it even existed. So right now Winter is a little homesick, very lost and with way to much to process in a group of people who worked and planned all their life on getting into that very school. He's trying very hard to do the right thing and safe everyone from everything. Besides him beeing in way over his head one of the most fun things is flavoring all his magic with gold, rainbows and sparkles.

Then there's Ethan Hayle who's a young Ventrue in a Vampire V5 campaign. When he was still human, he worked as a crime scene cleaner, making crime scenes habitable again after the police was through with them. He was aporached by someone offering him a very well paid gig cleaning a crime scene before the police arrived. Ethan couldn't resist the temptation and took that job. This led him to be a crime scene cleaner by day job and by night job as well. His new employer turned out to be the mafia who had to replace their former clean up guy after an accident. While the pay was very good this job didn't sit too well with Ethan's conciousness and after he found out that he knew one of the victims, he decided to collect as much evidence and turn that in to the police. As drama needs it, he handed the copy to a crooked cop who informed the mafia, iniciating a manhunt that Ethan only survived because of his inside knowledge and because he had help from a stranger. A few months after they went dark and decided to continue to try to expose the bad guys, Ethan learned that the stranger was a vampire and his sire wanted to turn Ethan into a vampire too. Seeing the possibility to kind of survive that way, he agreed. While Ethan doesn't really have a Ventrue mindset, his sire decided to turn him into one anyway because he could use the skillset of a crime scene cleaner and all the inside knowledge about the mafia, which is controlled by a Brujah who he has a very long standing feud with.

I used "meadia coverage" in a very broad sense here (as in online articles by magazines, blogposts and such)...

• https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-alternatives-lemmy-3335429/ mentiones lemmy.world way before any other
• https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances while not media gets linked rather often an has lemmy.world, beehaw and feddit on top of the "all instances" list
• https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2023/06/11/lemmy-migration-find-subreddits-communities/ for example links to awesome lemmy instances
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(software) again not media but in the same ballpark, lists lemmy.ml and lemmy.world

I honestly didn't keep track I just noticed this during the last few days that if there were instanced that were mentioned or linked it was usually these three, but it might also be confimation bias.

The main difference between these two instances as I see it is that lemmy.world gets a whole lot more media coverage, attention and direct links than sh.itjust.works. You have to do research or visit join-lemmy.org to find a link to sh.itjust.works and then their tagline starting with "A bilingual (EN/FR) general-purpose instance located in eastern Canada! Powered by 99% renewal energy!" might just keep some uniformed (as in how this federation-thingy works) non-canadians from joining (yes, I left out the second part of the tagline, assuming most people who'd be put off by the beginning wouldn't read any further).

That's an important question to ask. For me (and I want to make very clear that this is exclusively how I handle things for myself) there is a huge difference between things I use (or what I call passive association) and things I work on or contribute to (or what I call active association).

While im ok-ish with using their software if they don't really profit from my usage, I wont be actively helping them. Given the state of the world and western society, I can't really escape using products that are unethical and as a software developer working for a company I can't really decide who gets to use my paid work and since I very much like having a bed and a roof and food and even some comfort in that, I'd rather stick to my job, but I can make a choice on who I support with my free time.

Just check https://beehaw.org/instances Every instance has this list.

Thanks for the clear and open communication here. It's inconvenient but totally understandable and the main point with federation: If you want to, you can have a second account "outside" and whenever you want to read some post from these instances, you can make the decision to "go out" and do so before retreating to your safe home. No need to have your home possibly violated by an unvetted crowd if you can have an interaction wirh parts of that crowd outside.

same here... just right now downloading the font, thinking if I don't at least give it a try, I'll forever wonder what it'd be like...

An open minded crowd that creates an "us" without the band even beeing on stage yet and a band that knows how to and is willing to tap into that feeling and just kind of joins the crowd. As opposed to a crowd that separates into small groups where everyone eyes the others to find out who's the best or most hardcore fans or a band that's tired because it's the end of a long tour and would rather chill at home than play that gig.

I'm currently running a campaign in D&D5e and am playing in two others, there's a Scion campaign that I play in and yesterday a short campaign for Vampire the Masquerade had it's kick off. Additionally I'm currently planning a few shot for TORG Eternity that I'm going to run during summer break with the Scion group.