Was there even a mass exodus? I largely avoid Reddit now, but I do kind of doubt that they’ve been hurt in any meaningful way by all the protests and people leaving…
This crisis has given Lemmy enough users to be a vibrant, viable alternative with the software and apps undergoing rapid development. This means the next time that reddit tries to pull some shit, there will be somewhere for people to go, unlike this time. Lemmy just wasn’t really ready for prime time.
I think you are correct. Lemmy is really just gearing up at the moment, but can’t handle the volume to compete with reddit.
The increase of instances, user guides, communities and third party apps are necessary building stones of a federated reddit alternative of size.
For comparison, Mastodon got 2.5 Million users and then promptly lost all of them. Since then it has been slowly gaining back and last numbers had them at 1.7 Million already.
This X move by Musk might push them back to 2 million and beyond. The platform has matured.
Lemmy needs a lot of work still, but give it time.
