The UI is definitely lacking. It’s similar to old.reddit (which is a good thing IMO), but it’s somehow less intuitive and less functional (probably in part because as you mention it feels more mobile-oriented even on desktop). It’s also way too buggy with too much lag. Lemmy isn’t a new product that was quickly cranked out in direct response to the API fiasco at reddit; it’s been around for long enough that I’d have expected the user experience to be more refined this (especially since they’re clearly using old.reddit as a template instead of starting completely from scratch), and I’d even expect the platform to be able to absorb new users a lot smoother than it’s been going. Yes they’ve seen a large, sudden upsurge in users, but that’s how social media works: you suddenly get a lot of users in response to some event or another and you HAVE to already have the capacity built in to support that.

Honestly this feels like wiki social all over again: a cool idea that’s unable to take advantage of its 15 minutes of fame because it’s still half-baked. The Digg migration to Reddit worked because Reddit was a mature product that had not only worked out the technical/UI kinks but was also completely stocked with content. Not everyone wants to be part of some fledgling project that may or may not go anywhere, especially not one that feels like it’s still in beta at best.