I totally see your point and I tried GNOME first to have a uniquely Linux experience. I do agree with you. But the inflexibility of GNOME by default made it a much harder flip. I tried it with PopOS too, after using Debian for a while.
Plus tbh, I don't think with still how much you need to use the terminal for linux, anyone would be mistaken in the transition. Windows has kludge from the 90s for their settings and linux still needs terminal.
I tried PopOS and the pop store is not the best, and gnome is too foreign for someone coming from windows.
And also, too fiddly to make it work with a number of third party extensions vs the customization being built in.
KDE is heavier but also seems more streamlined and Cinnamon is fairly decent too.
This is just factually untrue with the numbers lemmy by itself has being having. Not to say anything of Mastodon and et al. There wouldn't be a mass exodus of highly engaged folks from reddit to lemmy if users just didn't move anymore. Threads got big but then instantly deflated to a much lower number immediately.
Why would they do that when they could just call it Virtua Boy 2?
Just waiting on what the Standard Notes collaboration pans out to. Also wish they'd flesh out their side projects fully before adding more and more new toys to the suite.