Federation is over-hyped when joining or promoting. It's only really important when there's a problem.

It's like trying to sell a new car by featuring the warranty, or trying to sell a computer by talking about backups. Both important, but not a shiny selling point for new users.

I get why the devs want to feature federation. If you build a car, you're probably going to want to talk about the engine and its design. But the users just want "car go fast".

Reddit was always kind of shitty broadly speaking, but it's waaaay shittier now compared to 10 years ago. Some things got better, like Jailbait and The Donald getting banned (way too late of course), but overall it's been getting ruined more and more by corporate greed.