I've only just joined and that's because the past few times when I went to join I was confused about joining a certain server. I figured I'd have to investigate which server is best before I joined one and found it was the wrong one.

Now I'm realising it doesn't matter too much. However the toggle at the top of the main page between 'subscribed', 'local' and 'all' took me some time to realise. That was only when I'd subscribed to groups and they weren't appearing on the main page. So wondering how I get to see them was already a point of annoyance.

Having that automatically toggle to 'subscribed' once you've started down that path would have helped.

Anyway, Once you're past choosing a server it all feels strangely familiar and I'm liking it a lot.

I think it will ... if I look at my own use-cases for sites like this, it's connecting with people over shared interests (rather than instances) or scrolling memes. I don't see how any of these use cases benefit from federation (from the user perspective). The looming threat of information disappearing due to defederation, the confusion about instances, etc ... that's off-putting even to tech-savvy users.

Also ultimately I find it questionable from a philosophical perspective. Why should it matter which instance is your "home" instance, unless that's specifically the way of interaction you're looking for?

Again, for me it's interests over instances, and I think the federation aspect is just an additional layer that doesn't add any value.