@kissane I wonder if info on the server about "these are the 5 largest instances we federate, filter, and block" would provide something reasonable for a new user to evaluate.

Probably not if you looked at it for one instance, but if you looked at a few you might get the feel of "there are instances that federate with threads and m.s, these instances don't seem to block anyone, these instances block threads and filter m.s". I feel like at present a user would only become aware of this long after choosing and maybe surfacing it would help. All the groups I just made up there would have pros and cons, but a bigger con is a user wanting one thing and ending up with something else.