Not to the average person, no. The fact that you have to explain this at all is the problem.
fututio_enjoyer
joined 1 year ago
I do understand how email providers work, and Lemmy is not just like them. Stop saying this.
It’s about as complicated as choosing an email provider.
I've spent all day trying to figure out the fediverse and I've read "it's just like email" about a hundred times. 😒
Is picking a server/federation too complicated?
Yes.
Absolutely.
Literally the single biggest problem with fediverse adoption, brought up in every discussion about migrating to it. It will never replace centralized sites as long as it remains confusing and complicated.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LemmyMigration/comments/145epgc/looking_for_a_lemmy_website_try_lemmyworld/
No, your analogy is not accurate. If Facebook and Twitter were part of the Fediverse, you might be able to post to one from the other, or you might not, depending on whether one had defederated from another other or not.
To extend the poor email analogy, it would be as if you had a Gmail account and tried to email a friend on Outlook, but you couldn't because Outlook refused to accept emails from any Gmail address, but you could get through to them if you sent it from a Yahoo address instead.