I understand that the fediverse isn't the most intuitive thing to understand, and that many people won't immediately understand it, but I've seen so many comments saying that it's too confusing (even in response to direct links to instances with the simplest explanations). There has to be an astroturfing campaign of some kind going on

Funny you mention that, I found out about Lemmy specifically from a dude who was being downvoted to hell for even mentioning it as an alternative. So glad I decided to look into it I love this place and the whole idea of the fediverse in general.