I’ve seen many comments and posts regarding the API fiasco on Reddit, with the claim that there will be a huge influx of users when that happens. I’m all for it, but I find it hard to believe that the average or even above average user will make the effort to switch.
I think it depends in part on whether there are some good, short (!) tutorials on how to use Lemmy on Reddit.
People who just want to continue to browse content will be deterred from walls of text with technical details about the Fediverse and how Lemmy works. It should really be a step-by-step instruction… ideally offering a few instances to choose from at the start. So that the few biggest instances don’t break down from the influx and people leave again.
From my experience with unexperienced users, they will drop Lemmy like hot potatoes when they run into the first problem or broken down server.
I don’t see that as a problem, tbh. Bigger numbers generally just mean more problems, in my experience. From poor users contributing nothing or bad content, to site devs seeing dollar signs and ruining the platform.
And if people get discouraged enough by a fairly simple system like Lemmy to give up or leave, they obviously weren’t interested in this and really just wanted something handed to them instead of being part of something.