Im honestly not so sure about the “more intuitive over time” part. I feel like a lot of people who are using lemmy currently are already pretty technically inclined, and they’re already mildly confused as to how accounts work. If that’s the case, imagine how a normal person feels. I don’t think we can rely on things getting smoothed out over time if we’re to maximize the short-term intake of users caused by the reddit exodus.
The way I see it, the benefit of federation is that it gives you the option/freedom to move to another instance later on while still being able to access all the network’s content.
I’m not sure if lemmy currently has this feature, but for example Mastodon allows a user to move their account to another instance. It’s not necessary for someone to move their account, but having the ability to is nice. A way to think about it is that it builds the ability to flee an instance into the platform itself, but doesn’t penalize the user from fleeing an instance. Unlike reddit where people are fleeing but now they lose access to all the content reddit has.
I think a barrier to wide-spread adoption of lemmy is that for a regular joe, the instance system is a bit confusing. I'm seeing a lot of people comparing the instances to email servers, but I think something they're missing is that there are a few large email providers which most people default to (e.g. gmail, yahoo, etc.) and a bunch of smaller ones which people go to if they disagree with the policies of the larger ones (e.g. protonmail)
I think that if lemmy is to replace reddit as the most widely-used link aggregator, we need some kind of default server which is large enough that people feel comfortable with settling in on. That way user base growth isn't hindered by confusion. If they later decide that a smaller instance suits their needs better (whether that be the moderation practices or site reliability), they can uproot and move their account there.
I looked around for an instance like a landing server and found lemm.ee. The admin advertises the intention of this instance to be something like a landing server, so maybe direct confused people to there and let them explore after settling in?
@eodc
@lemm.ee