Okay, although I'll probably roll this back if they come to their senses, I'm not expecting that; I'm expecting to be leaving Twitter pretty much completely. That makes the thought in the back of my mind that I need to choose a new instance here, somewhat more important.

Instances are absolutely not "communities"; they are infrastructure for accessing a larger network and as such, it is imperative that they be neutral. As such, a "themed" instance is probably not appropriate for me.

My most important consideration is that I need to use an instance which will not block or be blocked by the instances my friends are on - which include without limitation all of mastodon.social, shitposter.club, and pawoo.net. And I have to be able to reasonably expect that that will remain true, and that the instance will remain in operation, for several years at least.

For an instance to really not be involved in the culture war at all shouldn't be a special request, but it seems to be.

Any suggestions?

@mattskala I'm very happy with qoto. The only downside that I see is that certain instances (not that many, and not terribly important from my personal point of view) block us due to perceiving us as a free speech one. (We're very liberal in that regard, but freespeechextremist we're not.)