99.99% don’t really want or understand a federated system. How do you know it’s not hosted on someone’s desktop over DSL? How do you know it will be there tomorrow? How do you know they aren’t modifying the code to do something nefarious?

As long as there’s a “main” instance people will prioritize that.

Won’t matter. Based on recent behavior I’d expect any reasonably large sub to be forcibly reopened by the admins after a couple days. If the current mods won’t cooperate then they’ll be replaced by the hordes who want to go on a power-trip.