In some respects it feels like many federated platforms have approached things backwards, trying to rework a centralized structure to be distributed/decentralized, creating some of the awkward UX folks experience.
I think you’re right, but that this is also promoting faster adoption of the fediverse version of the apps. It’s a lot easier to say to someone, “Hey, here’s a FOSS alternative to this corporate app you already use, it functions the way you’re used to” than “Here’s a FOSS app that does something completely new.”
Once folks are interested in the fediverse through adoption of Lemmy, Mastodon, etc., it’ll be easier to get them interested in completely novel applications.