Honestly, I think defederating from some of the major instances is a big part of the reason it’s as nice here as it is. Beehaw doesn’t need to be a giant to have a place and a purpose, and it doesn’t need to be the only Lemmy instance anyone uses either.
I think we all need to get past this nonsensical idea that everything has to be the biggest to be worthwhile. Nobody goes to a nice local restaurant and wishes they were at McDonald’s. It’s okay to just make something good and let it be. It doesn’t have to explode to monumental proportions, and when it does that’s not really that great a thing.
Federation is an amazing tool in large part because of defederation. If instances aren’t using both they might as well all be screaming down the same meaningless content firehose, as far as I can tell.