I get the age requirement - as you say it makes sense - though it makes less sense why it isn't up to date information. Anyway regardless of the why factor it helps me understand where people are coming from when THAT is what they see, which is different than what I do, or what I would see if I personally (who would use DDG rather than Google) would see if trying to look up such a thing today.

I also get why they would want to see an example of a working Lemmy instance, before looking at a website called "join Lemmy" - they aren't interested yet in JOINING Lemmy, or information related to that, until they have seen what(ever) Lemmy IS first.

One correction: lemmy.ml has now fallen to fifth place in terms of MAUs (Monthly Active Users), with only 2165 compared to Lemmy.World's whipping 17195. The second place is lemmynsfw.com with 3288, so definitely a steep drop-off from the #1 spot to all others, then #3 lemm.ee with 2996 and #4 sh.itjust.works with 2392. So even just with respect to these top 5 servers alone, ignoring the entire rest of the Fediverse, lemmy.ml makes up at most 7.7% of the Fediverse, which falls further behind with each server added to the consideration (including the one I am on now:-).

I sorta get the historical argument, but isn't that a bit like saying that an actor is alive bc at one point they were, despite how they are currently dead? Or saying that Russia has not invaded Ukraine, bc at one point that may have been true, though it has not remained true for quite a number of years now. Or saying that Nixon is the President of the United States of America, bc at one point that was legitimately a true fact (yet is not a current one). Google results just seem so hopelessly wrong these days, telling people to put razor blades into their pizza and the like, and that if you stand more than 6 feet away from a nuclear blast you'll be fine to survive it safely. There are REASONS for all of how those answers came about, but it definitely highlights how they - and therefore by extension Google results (tbf the AI ones in those latter cases) - are incorrect. But that is what mainstream normies are most likely to use regardless? (Even if they ignore the AI garbage)

Also, those instances sorta are interchangeable?:-P Somewhat at least, which is by design of the ActivityPub Protocol that anywhere you are, you can access mostly the same content. That said, I like where you are going with that: in one sense they are, if not "the same" then at least they are interconnected, yet in another sense they each have a distinctiveness to them, with unique local content (which if marked "local-only" cannot be accessed from the outside, without an account on that specific instance) making them different from all others. And distinct admin+moderation practices, and account creation procedures, etc.

Less like email and more like a fleet of pirate/free trader ships each passing their messages to all of the others (excepting defederations), but remaining distinctive entities unto themselves with their own flairs and styles. And anyone can spin up their own ship and tap onto the Fediverse network to become one of them.