Often it is this vocal minority that brings these platforms as sources in drawing room conversations. Instagram is one week old Reddit, mainstream subreddits are propaganda with recycled news, media outlets cite Reddit occasionally… one well oiled loop machine.

Lemmy if grew on that scale, will bring with itself the toxic userbase that exists on Reddit, and work required to prevent that. If it does not grow, it will stay niche. If it acts like a more quality discussion place than a news aggregator, it can work out like Hacker News. Hacker News exclusively caters to technology categories, nothing more.