My grief with articles like this is that their "X is not there yet" statement rarely comes off as "It has rough edges but its improving", but always as "This product is flawed. Dont even bother".
And itd be fine if it's just someone's opinion, but here it's someone's opinion in a news article. The effect is that someone unaware of the fediverse will read that, assume that opinion is fact and never try the platform. Not only that, they'll also start stating the same opinion to others as if they experienced it first-hand..
Articles should bridge the gap of knowledge! Stop dissuading people from trying new stuff and encourage them to give it a go!
Sure, promoting lemmy as a drop-in replacement of reddit is downright dishonest. But it never hurts to create an account and see what the fuss is about. The article should work as a heads up to avoid headaches, not the website altogether.
Who knows, maybe it will be a perfect replacement for you, despite everything. I know it was for me.