The best way to make federation work is by users not even having to know or care. Do users even know email is federated? No, they just sign up with a provider and it works. Same with the phone network, sign up somewhere and you can call everyone in the whole world.

I think part of the reason that users don’t get it is that the federation is sometimes explained too much.

Beehaw sets a really good example here because it doesn’t really promote itself as a lemmy instance but as a unique community that just happens to be connected.