Other options are changing your sorting method. Like if they're currently dominating the Hot feed, they're probably not also dominating the Top 12hr feed, just switch to that.
I think the ideal would be a kind of recommendation system based on tastes and interests. When you go to the Mastodon site to register, it asks you your main interests and based on those it recommends one or another instance.
or will it stagnate and fade into obscurity like many other similar discussion boards?
well it wouldn't really play out like that, if Lemmy gets overtaken by a replacement (like Mbin, Piefed, or Sublinks), it would be a transition not a death
a big thing we can look forwards to right now is if Pixelfed gets better support to interact with Lemmy/etc communities/groups then we can get a big boost in userbase, even if they aren't using the Lemmy software we'll still be seeing their posts and comments
I wish Mastodon would improve their compatibility with Lemmy too, but they don't seem interested
So many specific interests still have very active forums dedicated to them, populated by the kind of people who want to ask queations aboht and discuss the things they have interest or expertise in
I hope these types of sites eventually switch off of software like phpBB and move to software like Lemmy/Mbin
Maybe someone should make a database migration tool so posts/comments/users can be retained
Isn't that what you want for a Facebook replacement though?
I guess being able to browse public profiles and posts would be good, but if it's like Facebook then wouldn't most people be using their real names and posting about semi-personal IRL stuff?
You'd want that stuff to only show for your friends, and maybe friends of friends
Yeah I could see this being a big factor. Advertising money can also mean directly paying people to use it, and hoping some of their followers might come along.
I think it's just discoverability of content, and probably some UX. Mastodon isn't really a great show of what ActivityPub can do. They intentionally don't have an "algorithm" or any kind of content discoverability. Also the federation is limited to following users, on Lemmy you can follow topics and that causes all their posts and comments to federate.
Just today I heard Bluesky is making a Reddit alternative. I'm a bit worried they overtake Lemmy.
Other options are changing your sorting method. Like if they're currently dominating the Hot feed, they're probably not also dominating the Top 12hr feed, just switch to that.