If it helps bring perspective. I’ve never even heard of Fedi Garden before this post. I did a lot of puzzling over choosing instances for Lemmy and Mastodon when I first joined and never saw a link to them. I’m not sure why they’d even be seen as a trusted list for a new users, since at joining the user also doesn’t know anything about them or their values, reliability, or reputation.

Plus, once you’re in the Fediverse you then learn you can just change instances. Once someone points out that [other instance] can talk to Threads users the individual can just switch or stay depending on their preferences.