If you still think “an own instance sounds like a great idea!”. Do it! But scale organic. Try to limit the registrations. Work with invites. I would recommend a closed registration and everyone with an account can invite more people. This worked great for a long time on my instance, and it prevents most of the problems above.
If it's too late, close the registrations. Encourage the people on your instance to move to other instances. And maybe if it's still too much, shutdown the instance gracefully. Inform your people, give them time to move on. Do it early, this is much less draining and frustrating than trying to run something that isn't working anymore. 🧵 🔚