The servers were computers 1000x slower than a modern mobile phone. So yes, Lemmy seems overbuilt.
Well yea, part of my thinking here is whether all the work of federation, from building the software, debugging and testing it (which AFAICT is a huge pain in the ass) and then actually running it as a job … is actually worth it … when users could very well be happy with something much simpler and the mission of creating a more open, safe and “billionaire proof” social web easier to achieve with something more straightforward.