I wouldn't worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)
Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn't fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren't yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.
Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit's leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.

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[–] joseph@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Was there ever really a gap? I got fed up with reddit and came right here and am very satisfied. I don't seem to be having a problem at all.

[–] Noscharhar@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I was using connect or something before Sync came out and I simply did not like the interface versus the 3P app I used for Reddit. This made me not use Lemmy at all for a while - so there is / was a gap at least for me.

Also my main page takes a couple days to get all new content vs hours on R. Which I understand, but there definitely is also that gap