Pixelfed user numbers seem to rise a lot: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/28627765

https://vernissage.photos/home may be better than Pixelfed. https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/28641458

#ecology for example has a lot of nice English posts.

Also, introduce them to the gup.pe concept where social groups can be formed on Mastodon:

https://a.gup.pe/

What new Mastodonians need to understand is that they need to follow hashtags, not people. This should be the first welcoming sentence on any instance.