I like the fact that mastodon.social is the biggest instance, but I would leave for an instance that is paid only, say $10/month, has a cool domain name, and thus can afford to raise the rate limits.

Mastodon.social feels like early Twitter both culturally (good), and fail-whale-wise (not good).

@gruber Very happy with my local mastodon.berlin instance so far. Aren't there any Philly-based ones that you would consider? You're not going to leave your hometown soon I suppose ;-)