Think about things from the point of view of someone who has never used Reddit or the fediverse, but you've heard about them both from recent news articles and want to see what they are about.
Reddit:- You Google Reddit and your first result is Reddit.com. You click the link and are presented with the front page. You from scroll from a few hours and end up signing up and staying.
Lemmy:- You Google Lemmy and your first result is a wiki article for Lemmy Kilmister... Your second result might be join-lemmy.org, which you're smart enough to realise it's probably more likely what the news is about.
You click join-lemmy.org and are presented with a page of information about the fediverse, links to set up a server and pictures of code...
There is very little chance you're going to investigate further.
If we want the fediverse to replace Reddit then either
A) Lemmy needs to improve its initial impression and Search engine optimization
B) We should be promoting a different platform with a better initial first impression.
I'd recommend kbin personally as it gives the same sort of experience as Reddit from the initial interaction.
We don't want the fediverse to replace reddit. Specially in term of popularity. What made reddit collapse in quality is the amount of people on the platform. The 3rd party app thing was only a trigger for many people. Many others have seen the quality of the content of reddit nosedive with time. The festival of memes and one liners has been described again and again. We didn't have this during those few weeks here. We will have it if the platform becomes too popular. How could it be otherwise? How can you picture a popular platform without the popular content? The platform filtering through some hurdles is a good thing.
Even now you can already see the bad behavior of redditor being reflected in the content. And it's only starting.
People have to come out of interest. Otherwise your platform will be filled with 1-click meme posters, and that's probably not what you want.