Lemmy is harder to start than reddit because the federated nature of it makes it not just one place. Just because you want to escape the man doesn’t mean you want to have to jump through hoops and read a textbook of documentation to understand things.
It’s not about getting told what to do or having your data sold, it’s about a friction-free social media experience. It depends on what the aims of the platform are and what the desires of potential users are. Personally, I’d imagine most users want something simple and easy, where they don’t have to think about what and where and how to post. But if the intent of the platform is to make that harder, then that’s fine, it’ll just result in fewer users and less content/activity.
Sorting this by active users gives you the answer you’re looking for better than that github page: https://lemmyverse.net/
That’ll only be the case if third party apps for kbin/lemmy are good enough and have the kinks ironed out within the next two weeks.