Funny you mention that, I found out about Lemmy specifically from a dude who was being downvoted to hell for even mentioning it as an alternative. So glad I decided to look into it I love this place and the whole idea of the fediverse in general.

I understand that the fediverse isn't the most intuitive thing to understand, and that many people won't immediately understand it, but I've seen so many comments saying that it's too confusing (even in response to direct links to instances with the simplest explanations). There has to be an astroturfing campaign of some kind going on

Probably written by AI even. Trolls can do that now.

there has been quite a bit of this - in many venues. I have been involved in so many firefights involving bullshit "what-a-bout"-isms and strawman ideological stupidity that I have wondered how much astroturfing and sock-puppetry was going on. now I suspect there was quite a bit.