The filter is atrocious.

I also feel like even though, yes it goes against the idea of a DEfederated setup, in order to entice users, there should be a big catch-all “default” instance that users will gravitate to when they don’t know what they want in particular. IMO, this isn’t a bad thing. It does lead to one particular instance getting bloated, but it gives people time to acclimate, to check out how everything works, and then once they’re cozy, they can pick up and move to a smaller, more niche instance.