Does federation have a bit of a learning curve? No doubt.
Is Lemmy buggy as heck? Absolutely.
But I don’t think that really justifies a lot of the comments I’m seeing in Reddit alternatives threads that it’s hard to figure out. The front page feed and sort options are very similar to Reddit. Searching for same-instance communities is not too difficult. Posting, commenting, and voting are all quite intuitive. What’s the problem?
It needs to be solved in code + ui, and ideally in the default Kbin/Lemmy interfaces, so that every new user’s experience is the best it can be.
At the end of the day it’s all about friction, the less of it the better.