This is a good point. And also reddit is astroturfing hardcore, it's likely that many comments are coming from botted accounts and especially upvotes are heavily manipulated.
I'm not disagreeing with the fact that a lot of people genuinely struggle to get started on Lemmy. But just pointing out that perception is actively amplified on reddit, because they obviously want to discourage people from joining Lemmy.
It's not a conspiracy at all, I've seen countless positive comments and posts about Lemmy removed over the past year or so. They know about us and they are worried.