Discuit is one of the alternatives to Reddit which emerged at the same time as Lemmy (the other one being Tildes, mentioned at the end of the post)

Lemmy has 48k monthly active users (mau): https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

Mbin has 862 mau: https://mbin.fediverse.observer/dailystats

Piefed has 133 mau: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/dailystats

On Tildes site, I counted around 25 posts per day: https://tildes.net/?order=new

We can see that federation was indeed a better solution, looking at the difference in number of Discuit and Tildes (not federated) vs Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed