I don't know if you've noticed this, but threads or comments about Lemmy or the Fediverse get downvoted a lot on Reddit and trolls who claim that it's "dogshit" and "not going anywhere" get systematically upvoted.
Some of those trolls get then exposed when you ask them what Lemmy instance they tried and one of them with whom I had a surreal exchange answered with something like "yeah ofc I used Lemmy, this is the instance: join-lemmy.org" 🤦♂️
It's frustrating that these trolls keep contributing to the big lie that "Lemmy is not ready yet" and that there's "no viable alternative to Reddit".
This and the overwhelming number of comments being "against the mod protests" just prompts me to question whether there isn't some brigading being organized straight from the Reddit HQ.
I understand that that's the point of it, but it runs contrary the network effect that makes social media valuable, and creates too much of a barrier of entry to new users.
When Twitter became woefully unpopular, I heard several different podcasters say something along the lines of "For now we're still on Twitter. We'll move onto Mastodon once I work out how to use it", and none of them ever joined. If content creators don't join a network because it's too difficult to join compared to other networks, then content consumers will have no reason to join either.
It's no coincidence that the biggest community on lemmy.ml is Linux.