https://spreadmastodon.org/utilities/round-robin
Mastodon wants to make sign-ups easier and direct new registrations automatically to 4 chosen instances in round-robin mode. These instances have to fulfill certain criteria to be eligible, but in any case one them will move out of rotation per year.
I think it is a good concept to actually avoid a single instance dominating everything else and over multiple years the rotation should avoid too strong clustering and makes usability much simpler.
Would this be something you would look for in lemmy as well in the long-term? Or would you trade the benefit of a concious decision at the potential cost of alienating people who just want to get the easiest way, which could happen to be a centralized big tech?
The instance owner needs to apply for it in the first place. Unlikely the average Joe would pick a tiny instance. Since it is federated, growing is not greatly applicable.