The fediverse isn’t that complicated, if you really care about ownership and control and the portability of data when it comes to using a social network.
The fediverse is just complicated enough that it is a big enough barrier to keep people that don’t care about those things from getting on boarded usually. There isn’t really a good way to make those factors less complicated with out compromising them for the whole reason people currently prefer the fediverse.
However there are some other pain points that could be addressed that I think will make things simpler for those who aren’t privacy/tech/decentralization focused.
Starter packs for one. Allow instance hosts to maintain starter packs for people to follow if they choose during the onboarding process. A lot of people complain about having empty or inactive feeds. Starter packs solve that easily. Especially if there is a repo for communities to submit their own starter packs as well.
Better discoverability. I know some people don’t want search to improve but it’s pretty hard to find people through actual Mastodon search. I dont know if it’s just do to a lack of users and content or if that’s something that truly needs improving. But basically my follows are usually found off platform and then manually followed or I follow someone I discover via a hashtag.
I don’t think the fediverse needs a fancy explanation that is non-boring. Either you care about federation and the decentralized control of the fediverse and it makes sense to you. Or you don’t care and those features then become roadblocks to getting on boarded.