First off, pro tip, if you commented again because your first was "stuck" with the spinny button, try refreshing and check if it took before you comment again. I have to do that most of the time and it takes and just doesn't update correctly. @ruud@ruud@lemmy.world is working on it but last I heard he has no idea wtf is up with that lol.

As for the comment itself, the big one is Tildes, but I know of at least two others I don't recall the names of. One I think is more new and reactionary but Tildes and (I believe) the third have been around for a while. People are flocking here because it's trending in conversations around alternatives because it's decentralized. The problem is those people don't WANT a decentralized service because then it means, well, there's no central organizational authority (almost like that's what the word means or something.)

They're bailing on Reddit because the leadership is spazzing out (so hard to not write spezzing out lol), they're avoiding Tildes because they think it's too much like Reddit and whoever built it is equally going to go sideways on everyone, they're avoiding the others because they don't have the population yet to be interesting, but then they're coming here and getting mad that it ISN'T Reddit. They want a 100:100 ratio of control:UX (usability, centrality, aesthetic, etc etc,) to both not be beholden to a central authority while ALSO having everything handfed to them from a single access point, and that's not how things work.

Centralized systems like Reddit or Google "just work" because all data exists exclusively on their servers under their control. You get a pretty, snappy experience because you get THEIR experience THEY crafted to access THEIR systems. You have VERY limited control, but it "just works" and the super non techy just get the magic scrolling sauce they crave without a clue of how any of it happens. It's a 10:90 split of control:UX.

Here, There's no central authority to burn the Earth, and if you don't like how Instance A is run, you can fire up your own instance and do what the fuck ever you want to on it. You have ultimate control, but that means that all the content and data is scattered across the web, across servers, across the globe. Everyone is doing their own thing, the way they want, controlling access and content the way they want, and no two instances are the same. It's great for that but you can't have some big central compilation service without a big central authority hosting and controlling it all from up high. For example, if I run lemmy.yeet, and I don't like what lemmy.beet is doing, I can stop federating with that instance entirely and our home users will have no access to the other's instance. It's a 90:10 split of control:UX.

I appreciate your analogy of traveling to a foreign place, ironically I just typed up a long page using the globe as a lemmy analogy (countries = instances, cities = communities, London exists in like 3 countries, doesn't mean they're connected) so it's quite fitting haha.

As you can see, I'm open to discussing it and I try to help people understand because while I'm techy I get that most people just play on their magic rectangle and never think about it again. It just irks me watching people, in keeping with the analogy, going to India and demanding that they install toilets STAT OR ELSE.