This is intentional. There’s a contingent of Lemmy power users who are actively sabotaging a push to make it more accessible. Every time this comes up, they openly admit their intentions are to keep it niche, and continue gatekeeping.
If that's true then the problem will solve itself when Mbin or PieFed overtakes Lemmy. The content will be there anyways, we just need to see who brings the best UX/UI (or whatever frontend/app)