No, I don’t think it will grow as big as the other socials. Because for the average Joe Normie it is way too complicated to understand what the fediverse is, and where they should sign up or post. In other words: the entry barrier is substantially higher than the competition.

However with simplified browsers like Wefwef it makes things a bit easier, and I do think it can grow reasonably big. Maybe in the future when there is more information available and the fediverse has matured.

I honestly think it's unlikely. Not because Lemmy is bad or that the tech couldn't handle it. But Lemmy isn't really profit driven - there's no way to really build a moat without defederating, and therefore no capitalist reason to advertise and grow a server - all that would do is increase infrastructure burden and then leave the server owner trying to figure out how to recoup the cost. And if they start running ads, charging fees or running people nuts with merchandizing, that growth they paid for is likely to scatter to other servers offering the same access to content.

So if growing tall isn't likely, what about growing wide? Well, maybe. I'm still extremely new to Lemmy World, but from what I can tell to run a Lemmy instance you have to have or be willing to learn a basic understanding of Linux, and be willing to charitably donate your hardware/bandwidth to the public. That might work out, or that might be constrained either by freeloaders scaling faster than donors, or the learning curve proving too much a barrier to entry. Wikipedia worked out, but it still has to occasionally prod its users to remind them it needs money to keep afloat.

No... Because unfortunately a lot of the complexity needs to be abstracted away.

I've been here for a few days now, the complexity is nice, but it isn't conducive to users, maybe Sync can abstract away a lot of the complexity.

As it stands, no Lemmy isn't a thing, and you know it too.

Yes, will it? No.

It's like in voting. Everyone lets do their part. Inviting colleagues, friends. And that will make it become such.