I disagree, it's little frictions like this that make it hard for newcomers to take the stage even when on paper they're better than established competitors. This is hackernews so obviously our population is going to be less likely to be significantly hampered by this, but I'm telling you for a fact that everyone in my family that checked out mastodon struggled to follow people that were on different instances, texted/emailed me about why they couldn't login on that instance, and have since stopped using it. Now I'm not sure if that's the only reason, but they all reached out to me about it and few about anything else, so it's definitely harmful for the ecosystem.
One of the things Tim O'Reilly used to say is, follow the alpha geeks.
If tech is interesting & compelling & there are some people there already doing the thing, people will overcome enormous barriers & learn lots to come participate.
Few of these systems are truly self apparent- all of them require enormous learning & training & sociation. But we dont see that because we so happen to have been using the same tech for a decade or two now, more or less. The "availability heuristic" tells us what we know is easy, and what we dont know is hard. This can deceieve.
Are Mastadon or the other activitypub systems really hard? Honestly I quite doubt it. But we are improving & making the experiences better over time. And more so, just as you were served as an in the know peer to bridge the Availabity Hueristic gap, the community grows & is better able to bring this knowledge to those who only learned how to exist inside the Walled Gardens.
