When it comes to instances there’s no “right” answer for everyone. Pick one that you enjoy, that you identify yourself with, that you don’t distrust the people in charge, and that is neither shitting its pants nor overly large. This site might help you with that.
I can’t recommend an app.
I’d go for stability. Smaller instances can be slow. If you want fast load times use a bigger one, like mastodon.social
Server doesn’t really matter much (to me), but I’m on toot.community because I’m mentally a child and like the funny name :)
App-wise, I really enjoy Moshidon, been using the nightly version for a while now: https://github.com/LucasGGamerM/moshidon
If you like Lemmy.World, why not set up the account on Mastodon.World? It’s the same admin/ops team.
I second moshidon, although I’ve just started using phanpy, which has some cool innovations. There is not nearly the wealth of Mastodon apps that we have here on Lemmy.
If you don’t want weird political shit, avoid the largest ones, like .social.
I am on mastodon.art which has most of the fascist distros blocked and I use Tusky. I love it.
Mastodon also has great filtering tools and temp muting so you can curate your experience pretty tightly too.
I don’t know about servers but moshidon is great
I’ve never even browed the local feed on the Masro server I’m on.
Just pick a non mainstream one that has been around for a bit ?
I use Fedilab, Megalodon and Rodent.
Tusky for client. Lots of good medium sized instances (avoid mastodon.social). I’m on mas.to for a general account and mastodon.scot for a local one (both reliable, run by the same person).
noc.social is a small but quick server. Don’t use Android so I can’t speak to that.
And I will say that I’ve got much better engagement on Mastodon than I ever did Twitter. The people overall are kinder and more thoughtful. It’s more likely that the disrupters just aren’t there yet. Almost everyone I had followed on Twitter is on Mastodon though. May not be the same for everyone.
Lemmy.world and Connect have been working great for me on multiple Android phones.
I use connect for lemmy, i didn’t know it has Mastodon integration
Lemmy and Mastodon are partially interoperable. Mastodon users can post to Lemmy by tagging a community, and can reply to Lemmy posts. Mastodon users can follow Lemmy communities, but the UX is pretty rough. Lemmy users cannot follow Mastodon users.
wetdry.world (/hj)
The benefit to finding a instance that somewhat fits your interests/ideals is that your local feed will be useful. On a huge instance it really is not.
Dunno how to answer your question BUT X-twitter was always political. It’s worse now because of the upcoming elections, AND if Elon is actually going to be a part of the government it’ll be a raging dumpster fire. Good luck, OP.
App wise I recommend just using the progressive web app (install website as app). It works very well, and you always get the latest updates.
For the server, find one that targets one of your interests.
Try Bluesky
