I don’t understand how someone in the comments says they’re tech literate but can’t figure lemmy out. Federation is somewhat akin to email. It’s really not all that complicated, imo, just a bit of extra friction at the onset to pick an instance.
It’s laziness. Them being “tech literate” is probably akin to knowing how to use the internet and signing up for a social media site. Enter email, new password, verify account, done. Understanding how federated social media works should technically not be an issue for them, because it’s literally just an extra step (choosing an instance to sign up with), but they are just too lazy or can’t be bothered to do it.
It’s similar to how Twitter users say Mastodon is “hard”. They want a 1:1 copy of Reddit or Twitter, and don’t want to learn new things because any kind of learning at all is unpleasant.
But that will change when—not if—the network effect of the social web becomes apparent.
I’m tech savvy and it took awhile to understand how Lemmy and federation worked.
Same — that’s why I tend to point people to a specific instance, instead of lemmy as a whole.