If you don’t mind about the local timeline, or that the main language is different or that other users might get it defederated then your approach will work.

They are marked as general but when you click or tap through it’s obvious most of them aren’t

Edit: Also, I thought this was a domain change not migrating the users. If they really are migrating users then that would explain why it’s taking so long. But why show the server as verified and available during the process.

I think someone not used to these things would see ‘Coming Soon’ and just leave it as not launched yet.

I thought Meta had said they weren’t intending to federate (at least at first)?