-active enough to have a good sized feed of communities
Personally I don’t think this one matters so long as it federates content elsewhere in a timely manner. Pay close attention to uptime stats on the Fediverse Explorer. Sort by Active Users for best results - and it looks like lemmy.ca is another good option, defederating from Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml.
I’ve been struggling to find another instance that ticks all the boxes
-allows NSFW
-doesnt censor swear words
-allows downvotes
-isnt an embarrassing name (looking at you sh.it.just.works)
-defederated from hexbear and other troll instances
-doesnt cave to elitist interests (.world has now fucked this up)
-active enough to have a good sized feed of communities
Personally I don’t think this one matters so long as it federates content elsewhere in a timely manner. Pay close attention to uptime stats on the Fediverse Explorer. Sort by Active Users for best results - and it looks like lemmy.ca is another good option, defederating from Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml.
You can block instances yourself, you don’t need to have your instance do that.
If you want a US based-instance, https://discuss.online/ blocks hexbear and lemmygrad
If you want a non US instance, https://sopuli.xyz/ blocks hexbear and lemmygrad
Both are large enough to address your last point.