It's quite telling that by having a more 'complicated' sign up process and 'how-things-work' around here is able to keep idiots off the Fediverse (for now)

And I appreciate this, which means as a potential user I need to do my own background research, look around at different sources of information, lurk for a bit, before committing to a platform. And this in and of itself, for me at least, gives me a better appreciation of the 'verse' and how I can contribute to it.

From the article "The Fediverse is not that. It’s kind of… different. I mean, the very first thing you get asked when signing up for a Fediverse platform is “Which Instance?”. The signup process in the Fediverse is more complicated than people are used to."

A counter example to this 'barrier of entry' would be threads. Super easy to join, making it almost 'stupid' not to join if you're already on IG and using Twitter, without understanding what it offers besides simply being an alternative to threads (this is where I was at, could not outweigh the cons vs twitter, thus did not join)