its not, really. and its something you get used to and come to appreciate.

the city analogy is a great one - every town has its own flavor. many towns build roads (federation) between them so all inhabitants can easily travel to each other... as a city.

some towns self-isolate or are isolated from other towns (defederated) for all sorts of reasons and, if you want to see what they have to offer, you can set up a house directly in that town or another town with a road to (federated with) that town. it really does allow some very cool places to thrive - like the internet was before it was purchased.

lemmy{dot}.world chooses to keep things pretty... bland? thats their right, but there is quite a bit of quality spiciness out there if you have a house in a well connected (widely federated) town or decide to set up a few additional houses in some of the more exotic towns.

does anyone have a federation graph up and running right now? should be easy-ish based on instance published federation lists.

No worries! It makes it more complicated to start, but it also has its strengths.