I have almost always had good luck. Just one bad experience comes to my mind - my host in Germany was a psychopath. I didn't have any problems with her, in fact I hardly ever met her during a one week stay. But I forgot the heating on when I left. She got so pissed off that she left a long, insulting review, where she said shit about how we never got along. Airbnb refused to delete the review, so I deleted my account. By the way, I don't pay $200 for a night. I take the cheapest $20 room that I can find.
Anyway, I created a new Airbnb account. The nice thing is that I was able to use a referral link from my wife again to get the referral bonus. So by deleting and recreating my account, I actually made $50.
I spent a couple of weeks bouldering in Fontainebleau and in the south of Switzerland. This was my favorite problem from the trip. I'm not a great slab climber so it took me a while to figure this out and I had a lot of fun trying. If you ask me, a rock won't get more beautiful than this.
I don't see how the system would change unless people stop tipping, but as a foreigner I don't see it as my responsibility to change their system.
How can I search for communities across servers that are particularly active on a given topic?
I agree, animal videos, especially those with a twist. My current favorite is AnimalsBeingDerps.
The thing I'm struggling the most with getting into Fediverse is that I have to create an account on a specific instance. I don't identify myself as part of a single community. I'm interested in several different topics and active in different communities. I guess it doesn't matter that much which instance I select, but somehow I have to select one instance.