I stated this many times in many communities, ever since the migration started over 3, 4 weeks ago, change the find an instance sites to keep a note to tell users NOT to register on the most populated instances, the ones at the top, but to find an instance that is a lot less populated. But, I guess no one actually took that seriously or it didn’t get through, IDK.
sh.itjust.works was pretty empty a month ago, but the name is catchy and it got swarmed over the last month… not as much as lemmy.world and lemmy.ml, but still. Now I recommend vlemmy.net or feddit.nl.