I'm using the browser from my laptop (phone screens are too small when the laptop's there) and lemmy is surprisingly good in all aspects. The only UI issue noticeable to me is that it doesn't remember my previous position in the feed when I press back, but that's also the case in many large platforms, lol.

Lemmy and jerboa are extremely polished compared to a lot of the free software I've used, albeit a lot less complex. FreeCAD is one that comes to mind whose UI and interaction actively fights you just to do simple things

I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

The fediverse instances are just lacking a few things here and there to be Twitter/Reddit clones.

Most open source software sans few exceptions like Blender are like 15 years behind the curve in terms of features, workflows, and design.

It's not just that: it is made worse by the fact that, being "free", resources are limited. For example, Lemmy.world has been experiencing several hiccups and it's bloody slow at the moment. I get it, it runs on small servers. But the QoS is bad nevertheless; how can you expect the average Joe coming from Reddit to stay here?

And for some reason, mainstream media seems to discourage people from FOSS projects. Just look at the coverage on Lemmy.

"It's clearly not ready yet."

Why? We don't know. It's just not.