I wouldn't worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)
Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn't fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren't yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.
Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit's leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.

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[–] lily33@lemm.ee 77 points 1 year ago (5 children)

To me, the smaller userbase is actually a real problem. I'm willing to stick it out and hope it grows. But for over half of the subreddits I subscribe to, the corresponding lemmy communities have 0 posts this last week.

Yes, I don't need 10k comments on my posts. But memes or mainstream news was never the big value of reddit for me - I can get these anywhere. Instead it is about the niche communities with a few thousand subscribers. And for now, I still have to use reddit for them.

[–] whatisallthis@lemm.ee 27 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Yeah the very top post on hot right now has 9 comments lmao.

There is no one here. I mean I love the platform and the apps. I don’t go to Reddit anymore on my phone. But there’s no one here.

If I don’t go to Reddit at least once per day I’m going to miss news and events that are important to me.

[–] Sl00k@programming.dev 51 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just FYI hot is probably the worst way to browse for news and events, I've found top of 6h is far better if you check often, Active if you check every 24 hrs ish.

[–] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

That's been my experience as well. I usually do top 6 or top 12.

[–] gullible@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

That’s mostly on the sorting algorithms being slightly fucky wucky. Lemmy has enough activity to satisfy me, but lacks niche communities.

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I've noticed that "Hot" turns the front page over pretty quickly, which means you see more in your feed, but posts are bumped down before the comments start piling up.

Whenever I've posted anything that has made it to the top of Hot, the majority of the comments come in after it has dropped down (which happens after like, 1hr).

[–] kat@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you sort by "active" there should be posts with more comments. The "hot" sorting is not really representative for how active users on lemmy are, since it favours younger posts over older posts with lots of comments. You can read the details of the reasoning here .

[–] DeanFogg@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I swap between active and hot. Seems to work well

[–] ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Reddit has a lot of international subreddits which don't really exist here on Lemmy (they have like 10 users and they almost never post).

Reddit has huge lively communities. I'm having a ball here on Lemmy, but I too must check Reddit once a day to know if important stuff happened.

Sure, someone could say I should work on jumpstarting these Lemmy communities, but I've only been able to to what I can so far (that is, replying to posts and joining the conversation)

Ninja edit: fixed grammar

[–] whatisallthis@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah the issue is that with large online communities, your largest user group is always going to be that of least engagement.

So users who just read stuff is your biggest group. Then comes users who made an account. Then comes users who up and downvote. And last comes users who post.

It makes it very hard to grow a new social media platform.

[–] flipthetube@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I’m in the same boat, but rather than just going back to Reddit for those communities, I’ve opted to lose those communities, conversations and information entirely. I will not support their platform.

And I resent Reddit for that in a major way. Fuck them.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, you need people to post and comment to develop a community. I've got one community where I post five times a week, but I've only had two posts from other people and only one person commented on a post.

[–] Rolando_Cueva@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What about now?

[–] lily33@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Still visiting several subreddits that don't have corresponding active lemmy communities. Once of them actually has an "official" lemmy community (run by the same mods) but none of the people moved over, so it's empty,