[bhoops]

The concept of federation is definitely complicated for most people. Even I dont completely understand the intricacies despite running a mastodon instance myself (link in profile).

However, you can have large general purpose instances which do not have to depend on federation to deliver the value of a network like twitter. Additionally, mastodon itself has grown by leaps and bounds in making the UX easier for the average user familiar to twitter/facebook.

I think its only a question of time before you have large general purpose mastodon instances where users dont have to grapple with federation and the UX becomes familiar for the layman. But at the same time there is space for smaller community focussed instances if someone wants to take their tribe with them.