It shouldn't be a turn off, but it absolutely is right now. Why does federation have to be so visible to the end user? I really don't get it, things could just be federated mostly behind the scenes. It already goes wrong on the homepage where users are faced with "joining a server" and they get overwhelmed by technical terms like "instances" "fediverse" "lemmyverse". Then you have to pick a server and one of the first things you potentially see is complicated url's no one can ever remember and descriptions containing keywords like "piracy", "NSFW", "furry" and lots of other stuff most people aren't interested in. But this already sets the tone of what content there is, which could be good but could also just scary people away pretty quickly.

Then even if a user does decide to go through and pick a server, they need to remember the URL of it. Lots of people still just go to google and type "lemmy", land on the homepage and see no login button and get completely lost.

And that's just signing up.

There needs to be a focus on UX, more specifically in getting rid of all that technical jazz for non technical users and in guiding users toward the content they want to see. People aren't finding the content or are just stuck on a page that doesn't update for days. All the different server related stuff should be invisible unless you want to see it.

There's just way too much focus on "federation" that few people actually care about. If you want people of all ages and interests, it'll have to become a lot simpler.