Definitely use some of the platforms as a user, first. I personally use Lemmy & to a much lesser extent, Mastodon. I think once you start using them and underst

Definitely use some of the platforms as a user, first. I personally use Lemmy & to a much lesser extent, Mastodon. I think once you start using them and understanding how the web UIs work (or don't), it'll help you build a mental model around the problems with UX and (partially) scalability of how federation works in these systems today. You can always go down the ActivityPub rabbit hole (maybe starting with something like https://dev.to/thasmin/getting-started-with-activitypub-2mgm https://dev.to/thasmin/getting-started-with-activitypub-2mgm) to understand the federation protocol, but this may be less useful if you're interested in the UX problem