Lemmy probably feels like Reddit when it first started, all warm cuddly and friendly to newcomers eager to discuss and collaborate around central topics.
I joined reddit on the tailwind, so it was all echo chamber, we hate newcomers, gatekeeping, automod frenzy, too many rulebreakers, too many rules, etc I could be wrong, but thats what I imagine it used to be like.
I was user 2600 or so on Reddit, and yes indeed it does. I just love this size. When I compare the content here and on Reddit, for me it's a world away now. The vast majority of things on here are relevant and interesting to me compared to reddit where it's all just low effort garbage and reposts.
My small instance had some instability while Beehaw was being botspammed in the random magazine. My instance's administrator explained that it was related to how Lemmy handles banned accounts in a very database inefficient manner. I think he also has an update not go as smoothly as anticipated once. But Lemmy.world being the largest instance gets the pleasure of discovering new scaling challenges as it grows
But, the big thing with the outages is I just went "oh okay, I'll just do something else then" just like the couple of times I experienced a reddit outage. I don't think it's as much a thing as the memes make it in both cases
Yeah, I still have yet to experience any kind of outtage and I signed up through Lemmy.today but I do see other people complaining about and they're not on the same instance as me.