"Choosing an instance isn't difficult, I think people are overstating that."
Okay, now find an instance that:
* Isn't defederated from some significant portion of my friend group.
* Isn't defederated _from_ by the same.
* Doesn't defederate from major news sources running on their own instances.
* Has reasonable moderation.
* Will actually be here tomorrow and not just fold.
* Has reasonable uptime.
* I can trust to not to keep an unencrypted copy of the database on a personal device.