Really? When I have posted comments on /r/RedditAlternatives about Lemmy being too complicated and that it won’t gain traction, I’ve been getting downvotes. Despite saying I use it.
Concepts like federation and instances are definitely part of the problem. Reddit is quite easy to understand. Make an account on the website (or not), go to /r/all or type in /r/whatever, and away you go. Lemmy is not that easy to understand. Many people that could be interested in Lemmy don’t have any idea what the different instances are or which they should use, so they just give up.
Lemmy doesn’t need to take off like reddit did, but those touting it as the next big thing are being very optimistic. The barrier to understanding is just too high.
That is probably the right way to get people started, assuming they want to do their browsing on their phone. The barrier to entry for those who just download Voyager is so low that it might help make up for a lack of understanding about other features. Then they just have to get over there not being an active community for everything under the sun.
Personally I find it worthwhile just for the extra civility there is here in the comments and the peace of mind I get from knowing that I’m probably interacting with real people rather than bots. Maybe those benefits of using Lemmy could be emphasized more than the benefits of instancing and federation.