I don’t think the relevance of the TLD matters. It’s worth being aware of whether you’re using a ccTLD, especially in the case of countries like Afghanistan, but you also used .io
as an example which is overwhelmingly used by non-British Indian Ocean Territory sites and is proven reliable. It’s even managed by an American company.
Then .app
isn’t a part of the original TLDs, but actually a part of the new wave of modern gTLDs. And if you’re considering .app
, there’s no reason not to consider the thousands of other generic TLDs out there.
Like with the ccTLDs, the only thing you have to consider is the trustworthiness of the managing org.
But how will you get a “universal” view of the fediverse? No single authoritative view exists.
You yourself acknowledge that this is complicated, but I honestly don’t understand what appeal a hacked together fake centralized system would have for people if they don’t care about decentralization in the first place. Any such solution is almost inevitably gonna end up being janky and hacked together just to present a façade of worse Reddit.
Lemmy’s strength is its decentralization and federation. It’s not a problem to be solved, it’s a feature that’s attractive in its own right. It doesn’t need mass appeal, it’s a niche project and probably always will be. I don’t think papering over the fundamental design of the software will make it meaningfully more attractive to the non-technically minded.