Lemmy (also mastodon, in effect fediverse) is about quality and interaction, rather than consumption. So userbase being “tiny” is a feature. Here, your posts aren’t buried under karma farming accounts, your comments actually lead to discussions and get replies.
I’ve switched to RSS feeds for my consumption habbits
There are probably lists you can search online but I find that adding /feed or /rss to the URL of a page I want to see updates from does the trick. There is also at least one Firefox add-on that indicates if a page has an RSS feed.
I follow blogs, gaming news and various other websites via RSS, and check my RSS reader couple times a day for new articles. Whenever they publish a new article, reader fetches it and there’s always something to read
Well said, the emphasis here seems to be more about the content rather than the amount of upvotes you can get. But as this community grows so will exploiters as well. Time will tell I guess, but I really enjoy this platform more than any other.