email. email is federated. literally everyone has an email address and understands they might be on a different service, but its all email, and you just use their account name and the service part with the @ in between.

it’s not a complicated subject at all, and a good chunk of the humans on earth have no experience being alive without a federated service being a part of their daily life. (lets not mention telephones, or national postal services)

the issue isn’t perceived complexity, it’s that the negatives of using a centralized service are outweighed by the benefits. people don’t see it as a personal liberty issue, or a free speech issue, or a propaganda issue, or a billionaire oligarchs ability to control the flow of information between citizens issue. they just want it to be easy to use. and the more people that do it, the less personal responsibility they feel about the choice.

learning from history is for suckers, I guess