@anitablanchard@mstdn.social Many smaller instances are operated by single people in their spare time. Running an instance is not an immense effort, but it's some effort, and these people might just stop at any time. In practice they tend to give early warnings, but there are no guarantees.

You are on one of the larger instances, so this is very unlikely to affect you directly (although someone you follow might migrate instances at some point for this reason). There are other downsides to big instances, so it's not a clear choice in general.
@nolan