Out of curiosity, how come you don’t recommend your own instance, feddit.org?

Even if feddit.org is bilingual, the main language is still German. The sidebar text is in German first, !main@feddit.org is name "Haupteingang" and is mostly in German, the Matrix chat is in German, etc. It makes sense, it's the successor of feddit.de, but probably not ideal for a non-German speaker. My main account is on sopuli.

By presenting people with “here’s an instance if you’re American, here’s another if you’re European” might support the idea that people will get differenct experiences based on their location.

Indeed, I guess I'll add a short "using a server on your continent is better for latency, content is the same"

I do wonder whether instances should be scored by a few factors and recommended that way?

I kind of did a similar assesssment a while ago (https://feddit.org/post/5215276/3396746)

Long story short, there is no ideal generalist instance. If you open the top 20 instances (https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/)

• Lemmy.world is too big
• Lemm.ee is federated with hexbear and lemmygrad, something that is not very welcoming to new users (see this thread: https://sh.itjust.works/post/28798607/15305964 )
• sh.itjust.works names contains "shit", which can deter users
• lemmy.ca is Canadian-centric
• feddit.org, as you mentioned, is German-centric, but technically English speaking too
• dbzer0 federates hexbear
• programming.dev is topic-centric
• blahaj is queer-focused
• discuss.tchncs.de has a difficult name
• lemmy.sdf.org does not defederate anyone
• lemmy.zip is federated with hexbear and lemmygrad
• beehaw is way outdated
• infosec.pub is topic-centric
• aussie.zone is country-centric
• midwest.social is region-centric

That's how I came up with sopuli.xyz (neutral name, stable, defederated grad and hexbear) and discuss.online (same)