I guess I missed the drama. But it is to be expected. Many people came from centralized social media, and simply signed up for something their friends told them about. For those people, they learned about federation after the fact. It is a new concept for a lot of people.
Right now the user’s identity and the content they consume & interact with are too intertwined in many cases.
There are two aspects here:
We have to get out of the mindset that the server you sign up on is your community, because with federation, you are not limited to the server you sign up on.