It can appear identical, but doesn’t function identical and requires a bit of research. There’s a learning curve to how instances work, finding communities, etc. Its not hard, but it doesn’t function like reddit does, most people expect a site where they can go to a website, punch in what they’re interested in, and get results.
Lemmy is not hard to understand, but most people are just going to leave if it doesn’t act immediately how they expect it to. But like I said, its fine. Its active enough here, and I hope it continues to grow, but its not going to rival a major website like reddit. I kinda like that though, this place reminds me of some niche forums I was active on 15 years ago.
This is only the case because of these two issue trackers:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1113
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1048
Once they’re solved, using lemmy will not require any additional knowledge than reddit.
Those are definitely the most significant pain points I’ve observed so far. Hopefully they are both addressed soon