I’ve been on Beehaw and Lemmy.world for the past two weeks now and while people seem to be posting content that isn’t about Reddit or Twitter or how great federated platforms are, such content does not receive as many comments/discussion as topics about the Reddit API controversy, or the current Twitter controversy, etc.
I prefer to sort by “new” when on the main page of either Beehaw or Lemmy.world. Most posts scarcely get a few upvotes and almost no comments. Without comments, I feel far less inclined to leave a comment unless there’s a discussion already going on.
It feels like the gravity of discussion is still mostly centered on complaints and discussion about Reddit (or Big Tech in general), despite this platform being billed as a Reddit replacement. Hopefully that changes with time but there’s a reason I haven’t left Reddit yet.
I agree, though hopefully this will pass with time as people default to Lemmy rather than Reddit for their downtime. That said, when the Titan submersible craft story broke a week or two ago, there was decent discussion on here. For the most part, comment threads are a ghost town aside from threads bitching about Reddit, but there are occasional exceptions to the rule that should become more common as people get adjusted here.