I see something similar in a lot of tech-related threads too.
Just check out posts and comments about Corsair and AMD in particular. There is often no room for logic, facts or debate around their products on Reddit. Rather, threads feel like you're stuck in a marketing promo event where everyone feels the products are great and fantastic and can do no wrong. It's eerily like you're seeing a bunch of bots or paid shill accounts all talking to each other.
Extremely rich man who is surrounded by yes-men and a society believing wealth equals success believes he doesn't do things wrong.
At least he genuinely believes that and it isn't a lie I guess.
It's debatable whether a lot of these smaller communities really provided much value outside the tiny userbase they have.
Besides, if someone wants to pick up the mantle on Lenny they are more than welcome to as well.
I'm happy with the amount of users and activity Lemmy currently has. It doesn't really need go grow though any means other than organically imo.
What you need is medication, not food.
Get a bunch of laxatives, stool softener (if you need it juicy) and even some lactaose and senna if you're real keen.
Then eat a shitload of greasy food and you're set.
Notice how Reddit haven't engaged in any positive damage control at all? It's just been hit pieces against devs, an AMA with completely canned responses and unprecedented wide-spread hostile action against it's content creators/power users/mods?
Reddit is in full-blown sell out mode right now and nothing but money matters anymore. It's all down hill from here.
Reddit won't die in a big catastrophic Digg moment, that was a rare event that doesn't usually happen so blatantly.
However, Reddit has reached its high water mark though, I absolutely agree. It'll slowly continue to bleed good, contributing power users like yourself in favor of becoming an algorithm-run mass-appeal corporate shit hole just like Facebook. It is very sad to see moderators like yourself being treated so poorly though and I hope you stick around here at least somewhat even if it's just for your own sanity.
I think it was a success no matter how mainstream news outlets or Reddit want to spin it.
The mods of subreddits very cleverly pointed out that the direction Reddit is heading in stinks and even all the masses who don't care about it still got the message though being inconvenienced by not having access to their favorite echo chamber for a few days. Just look at all the comments on "should we open up" posts from pissed off mouth breathers basically demanding they return things to normal.
At the end of the day, of cause Reddit was going to force mods to open up their subs or remove them. The mods never really had any power in the situation anyway and the precedent of Reddit just taking over subs was already well established. If Lemmy or Kbin was another 5+ years in development with a couple of much larger communities already well established then the exodus might have approached Digg levels again, but the lack of easy mainstream alternatives means that Reddit was always going to get its way eventually.
Personally, I'd never even heard of Lemmy, Kbin etc until recent events and thought it was limited to only Mastodon which never really interested me.
The amount of software development recent events have inspired around the Fediverse seems to be just the kick it needed to have a bright future too.
I really hate how much certain groups constantly dog whistle about transgender people as if it's the new scary gay people that are coming for your kids or something. Meanwhile, the average person would be lucky to even run into a transgender person and even realize it on any given day.
Here's the thing: typically I'm not going into a discussion on social media with the aim to change people's opinions or even to argue with them.
But what ends up happening is that they immediately assume it's a bad high school debate and things quickly devolve into bad faith arguments, attempts to nitpick and just general toxicity.
What I'm saying is that while tiny communities are great, the fact that they haven't moved to a federated platform yet doesn't really matter. Anybody, including yourself, can start up those communities on the Fediverse and curate them if there is enough of a reason to do so or just continue to engage them on Reddit too.