Don't forget that all of these services are rough around the edges when they start out. As a developer, I can tell you from experience that it is 100% impossible to predict how a large group of people will use your software. It always has growing pains as real humans come in and tell you what they need from it. Reddit has had a long time to gather a community and to not only implement but to polish the behavior and performance of its features.

My point is that you're probably not wrong to not love lemmy or kbin yet. But that things will get better eventually, given continued community and developer investment.