Also found in a !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com post by @biltong@piefed.co.za : https://piefed.co.za/c/fedibridge/p/22233/post-on-r-buyfromeu-on-the-recent-surge-of-users-to-piefed
I like the way Voyager does it:

DeltaChat also has a very easy onboarding process: you just put your name, and that’s it. The app creates the password in the background and allows you to switch servers easily. That really helps with onboarding new joiners.
Piefed.zip could be a nice default choice. If there are others you see, feel free to suggest.


Something like that could be a good place to utilize “trusted instances.” So, instead of just choosing a random instance of all of the piefediverse, it chooses a random trusted instance.
The feedback in this thread overall has been helpful.
Asking “what topics are you interested in” / “what communities do you like” and “what’s important to you” would also help.
Also, “I’m a returning user who did not like the first choice X because of Y” should be an option.
You didn’t like the moderation? Too many defederations? Wrong kind of weird? Bad server performance?
Then try to pick something for them that fixes those problems
This would also require many instances to set out in detail their location, focus etc and have a category system that recognises that.
https://join-lemmy.org/instances has exactly that.
The fediseer can help here both with the trusted instances and with finding servers based on tags
Trusted instances would have to be set on an instance by instance basis else the old accusations would come out of preloading bias.
This is already the case. Each instance sets their own trusted instances. There are no instances trusted by default. In
/admin/instancesif you click edit in an instance’s row, then you can check the box that it is a trusted instance. Also, these are one-sided relationships. Instance A can mark Instance B as trusted, but the converse is not required.