Is picking a server/federation too complicated?

Yes.

Absolutely.

Literally the single biggest problem with fediverse adoption, brought up in every discussion about migrating to it. It will never replace centralized sites as long as it remains confusing and complicated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/14t9t66/im_so_lost_is_there_an_easy_mode_to_the_fediverse/

https://www.reddit.com/r/LemmyMigration/comments/145epgc/looking_for_a_lemmy_website_try_lemmyworld/

I think the official Mastodon app does a great job at simplifying on how to join mastodon.

That's good. I originally looked at Mastodon years ago and it was just as complicated as Lemmy is now. Good that they figured out how to make it easy to use.

Stolen cookies gave attackers access to all private messages

Aren't "private messages" not really private on lemmy anyway?

The block list should be shared, too, like a reputation chain or collaborative filter. "You and user X have both blocked Users A, B, and C. User X has also blocked D. Would you like to, too?" We can each decide the kind of moderation we want to see.

There are differences between the servers, though. Instead of picking randomly, it should ask you a few questions about what you value and what you intend to do.

I made this account to look at NSFW stuff, for instance. I had read that lemmy.world was the biggest server and it checked all the boxes of allowing NSFW content, downvotes, community creation, etc.. "OK, should be fine." Only after trying it out did I realize that all NSFW thumbnails are blurred and you have to manually open each one, and lemmynsfw.com has a patch to fix that. So if you're making an account for that purpose, it should recommend that server.

Likewise, the admins of different servers have different goals and rules. beehaw is expressly created to oppose rationalism(???), for instance, and disabled downvotes and has heavy moderation of things that don't fit the admins' beliefs. The Lemmy sign-up process should give examples of the kinds of things that have been banned/moderated and ask if that's your thing or not your thing.

It should be kind of like https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/

(Also, server administration costs matter? Servers that are hosting lots of images will be more expensive to run. If you're consuming all that content with an account on another server, is that fair?)

Brilliant!

I do understand how email providers work, and Lemmy is not just like them. Stop saying this.

It’s about as complicated as choosing an email provider.

I've spent all day trying to figure out the fediverse and I've read "it's just like email" about a hundred times. 😒

No, your analogy is not accurate. If Facebook and Twitter were part of the Fediverse, you might be able to post to one from the other, or you might not, depending on whether one had defederated from another other or not.

To extend the poor email analogy, it would be as if you had a Gmail account and tried to email a friend on Outlook, but you couldn't because Outlook refused to accept emails from any Gmail address, but you could get through to them if you sent it from a Yahoo address instead.

Not to the average person, no. The fact that you have to explain this at all is the problem.