You have a point but maybe the gatekeeping is a good thing?

Average user doesn’t care about federation would translate to the average user doesn’t care about this community. Maybe?

It’s like how some old forums would charge for an account. Kept a certain low effort person from signing up. Sure it might turn people off but if you do enough work to understand how to get in then there’s a level of buying into it that might make you care more.

Just some thoughts.