only because the assertion you posted claimed it "never" could. my mind irresistibly sets out to check the assertion and, because of the structure of the phrase, seeks a single counter example.
now, you had quotes around never, so I took that as meaning you didn't mean literally not once, but more like virtually never, almost never. so the assertion checking involved looking for situations in which it held and those in which it didn't, and expecting the former to be a supermajority. which is still the opposite of what I see.
now it looks like you're saying the "never" meant something more like "whether or not", i.e., being federated doesn't affect the outcome by pretty much leading to failure, as a reading of your claim might suggest, but rather that some details of how federation is exposed to users of the service may have some effect on it.
that feels like moving the goal post, but the new question is a lot more interesting indeed.
I'd pose that they offered something sufficiently interesting for enough people to overcome the barrier of understanding the federation model as to make it common knowledge.