What fascinates me is how big the hurdles were even after I was fully sold on the idea and wanted to participate. Even when going out of my way to look for fediverse stuff and wanting to look for instances to join, there was no guidance. The first info I got was highly technical info on the protocols themselves. That would turn most people away immediately. This was many months ago though, it seems to be getting better every day as more people participate and contribute.

Edit: I forgot to add my theory to this, which is that non-capitalist entities don't have the same compulsion towards growth, so they don't emphasise the onboarding process the way capitalists will.

I fully expect though that as centralised capitalist social media continues to implode it will give way to the fediverse which seems better at building something more robust and long-lasting, and eventually it will gain the network advantage where people join because that's where everybody else already is.