Give us "normies" a little credit. I'm not technical minded AT ALL and I'm still willing to stick around and figure out how this shit works. Do I understand it? Hardly. Does the app I'm using (Jerboa) work? Barely. (Although today's new release has improved it greatly, thanks guys!). But I'm still floundering around here and it's a bit frustrating. I'm still going to give it a go though. I'm confident that improvements will come that make it easier here for everyone like me that uses the internet a lot but doesn't really understand the internet that much.

But maybe I'm just willing to stick it out because I was only looking for an excuse to leave Reddit and the means to do so. I admit I don't really care about the recent debacle, I just miss the old Reddit of 10-15 years ago and I don't like what it's become (a place full of memes, TikTok videos, dumb jokes, and hardly any real conversation anymore). It took this most recent fiasco for people to start talking about alternatives and that's when I finally learned about the fediverse and made the move. It has been a lot easier to leave when I knew where I could go.

Normies are going to take one look at the list of Lemmy instance and say ”nope.” So that leaves mostly us technical minded folks. So then, why would I use Lemmy over HN?

To be honest, I (as a techy myself) thought the same when I checked out Lemmy for the first time. Once I realized that most of the big instances are already federated anyway and that I can see all their posts when I browse All, my doubts were gone. It's really not that much of a hurdle, even for non tech savvy people.

What's HN?

User education will be key. Let’s face it, old time “Redditors” will look at the simplicity of creating an account, and looking at sub-reddits and say “I’m too old to learn a new way. This is too much”.
The seniors won’t leave, and the younger who don’t follow basic tech will be in the same boat. Just look around some of the subs there - they are entrenched.