Honestly the current content is not doing the platform any favors. Who wants another social media option that ranges from the inane to the toxic? Reddit like forums, open source self-hosting, federation, these are all good points but people need to see how they make a difference in practice. Mastodon somehow managed to be seen as a less toxic version of twitter, though it might be mostly peoples wish than anything in…
It's probably as much to do with the people as anything about the software. I have the impression Gargron set out to create a less toxic version of twitter and the early users he attracted were people who wanted a less toxic version of twitter. Many of the later users were people who liked interacting with those early users.
It appears Lemmy may have been created by people who wanted a version of reddit for militant communists, which might tend to discourage anyone who doesn't want to talk to militant communists from adopting it.