@shoq There was also a discoverability issue. Most people who went to joinmastodon.org were served a very short list of instances with most of them closed to new registrants. Those that were open were mostly for niche audiences. There was no link to other directories that were open. So for non-technical people it really was baffling.
That might have changed since then but it was the root of the "confusion over finding a server" issue.