If the fediverse is to be adopted by the masses, the onboarding experience needs to change. A new user can’t be presented with a choice of instances as part of signing up or at least the process of making the choice needs to dumbed down a lot. I don’t know how or if this can be solved, I just know as someone involved in app development and UX that the current experience won’t work.
My mother would not know how to handle this paragraph: “Lemmy.world is one node in a network of hundreds of Lemmy instances. Before you sign up here, take a moment to explore all the instances at https://lemmyverse.net/. You may find an instance with a regional or topical emphasis that speaks to you! Don’t worry about being left out; Lemmy instances are interconnected so users from each instance can participate with communities on other instances.”
For mass adoption it needs to be so simple that even non-techie older people can get through it without feeling like they might be doing something wrong.
A part of the problem is that there are multiple similar general topic instances/sites to choose from. If there were more dissimilar, specific topic instances/sites it might help reduce the choice paralysis a little.
It might even better help highlight the perks of federation, as it would be easier to be like, “See, even though you’re on cuteanimals.posts, you can still check out and comment on stuff besides cute animals if you want.”