This is not going to be a blogpost about "Why do people still use Reddit instead of everyone moving to Lemmy?". I noticed that even with Mastodon users, who already understand and like the advantages of decentralized platforms, the usage of Lemmy is extremely small, and more people use Reddit. Most of them haven't even heard of Lemmy. To be fair, the Reddit usage also seems to be fairly low.

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[–] Toasticus@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

So, saying 'nobody uses X' is a bit of a stretch considering that whenever it's said, there's proof to the contrary that people use said thing. People use lemmy at times, but the problem is as it has been pointed out before many times, is that lemmy is still too niche and small when compared to larger platforms.

One of the big reasons I can think of is, is that Lemmy just doesn't have the span of community as someplace like Reddit does. You're not going to find a Darts lemmy instance, you're not going to find a MentalHealth lemmy instance or anything. On Reddit, there's hundreds of micro-communities that cover a range of interests that anybody can join and talk about.

Lemmy only seems to focus on just a handful of things; Politics, Memes, Games, Piracy, Linux, News, Technology and Asking Questions. That's great and all but, just about anyone has these in spades. Not everyone wants to cycle through those things on a daily basis, they'll want something more. But it's going to turn people off from Lemmy immediately when they migrate from Reddit.

Yeah sure, we can tell them to make an instance to cover that niche itch, but once it's built, it can be months to even years before it gets attention. And nobody wants to spend time just running around like an annoying salesman to get people to join said instance just to feel better about converting someone else over from one side to the other.

Another reason is that - moderation can be ass. Yeah, some moderators on Lemmy have the mentality and maturity of an edgy 15-year old who spends too much time online for their own good. And we can all see it in plain sight on the modlog so I don't even need to explain.