Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.
lemmy has become much tolerable after i blocked all the meme communities.
i also block hexbear and beehaw for separate reasons.
The problem is - on reddit, the userbase is large enough that I can decide what I want to talk about. If i want to discuss underwater basket weaving, there will be communities talking about that. lemmy is nowhere near big enough - there's traction on /all/ but not on the smaller communities.