I think the annoying part of this is when you stumble across an interesting account you would like to follow outside of your home instance. You have to copy the username and the instance address, search it from your home instance, and then follow them. Or, login from a popup window and then hit follow. Nothing too complicated or long, but I can see how some people see it as unnecessarily clunky. No idea how it works from mobile though, maybe it's a little bit more complicated there too