Number of (active) Lemmy users seems to stabilize and I think this is a great thing. Indeed we got a lot of users when reddit shutdown its API (I was among them despite being a long time oss user), many have left, but the community seems now to stabilize to ~ ½ of the big grow in june '23. I think this is very nice for lemmy, we can be proud of this project.
The stats come from: https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
People create these hyper-specific communities as if there are millions of users. Most of the time, I think they're just mod squatting, hoping that theirs becomes the chosen one. It's a fucking joke. Trillions of meme subs, US-centric news/politics and fuck all else.
You are the first person I see here that also acknowledges this issue. It's like butter spread WAY too thin and people are just fine with it - or at least they ignore it.