The problem isn't that people need the right analogy. It's that they never really learned email. Right from the beginning, the commercial Internet has been tryi

The problem isn't that people need the right analogy. It's that they never really learned email. Right from the beginning, the commercial Internet has been trying to blackbox technology and present the "just works" button. So when email breaks because of federation issues, people shrug and say "well it worked for me (using the most centralized email systems)". The amount of conceptual learning needed to understand the federation model is roughly similar to a complicated strategy game that needs a 15-minute tutorial. A motivated child can work it out; a stressed and distracted thirty-something will try to avoid it, or maybe mock it so as not to normalize its use. I totally think it's possible to normalize federation since there are tons of conceptually difficult systems in daily life. Some of the burden of that rests on UX and onboarding. But far more of it is a case of, are people desperate enough to bother?