The whole pick an instance/server thing also confuses people.
Yeah, and there's more than one reason to recommend the bigger instances. As the article points out, it's the most reliable way to get exposed to the largest variety of users and other instances. This was fairly standard advice when I joined way back in 2018: "just join the main one. figure out who to follow and what servers you like. when you start feeling comfortable, you can move your profile to the server you want."
And that's what I did before settling in elekk.