The problem is trying to get people into “Lemmy”, where they have to understand federation and choose an instance, etc - instead of trying to get people into a specific instance. I know you don’t want one bloated instance, but if that was the mission it would be a lot easier to get people on board.

How did you get an account?

Same

You make good points, but I still think nothing good can come of playing ball with Facebook. I dont trust them

I had the same issue as you and I bought a mini PC for under $200 and it works like a charm

Instead of comparing every single individual users votes with every other one, you create clusters using data science techniques and bucket all users into those clusters, which are calculated on a nightly or weekly basis. By controlling the cluster size you can keep the number of comparisons managable, and still achieve OP’s vision.