yep. for better or worse (it is security-wise), a federated platform has taken over way more of my chatting than Signal ever reached, and Signals insistence on "we know what client people want" plays a large part in that.
Everyone loves to rag on signal here it seems. They would rather something be correct in ideals than help the largest amount of people. It’s a strange and holier than thou stance to take in my opinion.
So I don't think "it's impossible to make a non-shitty federated client" is really a valid argument. That's not to dispute real problems with wide-open federation or XMPP, because they absolutely exist, just that "the clients are hard to use" seems more an artifact of the resources of the people making them than anything to do with technical merit.
Perhaps not, but it's definitely a strawman.
I imagine federated chat means more opportunities for your users to avoid seeing ads too... Just use someone else's server!