Which Mastodon server can you recommend?

Considering the way it works, where your "twitter handle" is defined by the server, and I assume thus locked to it, I'd probably consider running my own instance if I wanted to use it for something serious.

I actually do think the federated version of Twitter, where organisations run their own "Twitter" which then connects to the rest of the "Twitters" is a solid foundation to build an internet that is not too reliant on massive advertisement corporations. I'm European and I did spend a decade in our public sector, but I think there is just something fundamentally wrong with Danish politicians being on Twitter or Facebook instead of being on something like a Mastodon server operated by the Danish state, and I frankly think the same for media organisations like our news papers. They'd be much better off in the federated version of Twitter.

The downside is of course that it's not easy. I looked into a few servers for Mastodon, and the one I liked the most would cost me a monthly fee of €1 with all profits going to planting trees. Which is nice and all, but looking into the "organisation" behind it, well... Most servers seem to be run by just a few people, who aren't really accountable. This is probably going to be just fine. It works pretty well for Open Source Software, but here you can't fork projects when their operators lose interest, and it seems like sort of a design flaw to have your "twitter handle" tied into something you still have no real control over unless you operate your own Mastodon instance or join one of the ones that are operated by real world organisations that you trust.

Considering most of these are run off small VPS instances, you should look for one geographically close, without too many users, that isn't on the banlists of servers you want to talk to (I'm assuming that you aren't interested in self-hosting). Maybe you should first identify some people you'd want to follow, and use that to narrow things down?