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?
This whole thread is pretty dismissive. This might be simple in theory, but I’m sitting here using an app (Summit) that doesn’t let me view my profile or subscribe to communities (yet). I’ve used RIF for about ten years now and got way too used to a smooth, easy app that I knew backwards and forwards.