When other instances have abstract requirements and a manual approval process that takes who-knows-how-long, though, that's not always such an easy ask. People want to be where other people are, and those busier instances are the ones that set harder requirements.

When I left Reddit, I signed up on two instances: lemmy.ml and beehaw. I was eventually approved for lemmy.ml, but even now trying to access beehaw just hangs on the login page perpetually, presumably because I have not been approved and there's nothing else I can do on my end.

[–] scubbo@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Ironic that "accounts will be portable - if you don't like the behaviour, practices, or community of one instance, you can take your data and leave" was touted as the big selling point of the Fediverse.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

One of the admins just had a post on beehaw saying their application waitlist had been over 5000 users long. And there are just a handful of them going through it.

They found ways to speed things up a bit so they say wait time should be like 24-48 hours.