I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
The peak for Lemmy at 55k is really really super tiny, in comparison to Reddit's literal millions. Whether that's a good or bad thing is up for debate, e.g. this very OP stating it as a bad thing, and people responding to it pushing back saying it is a good one, to have avoided being noticed more by bot brigades and large-scale disinformation and influence campaigns (which might be here as well, but there's definitely less incentive for them to be).
The potential to attract large masses here I think does not exist. It could though, in theory, if we really did want it to and work towards it. The major thrust forward there that I know of is the PieFed software, which gets out from underneath many of the heavy aspersions that Lemmy is not even trying to distance itself from regarding authoritarianism. But PieFed is only used by a couple thousand people, and high ironically people are resistant to switch to it, just like others are resistant to switching from Reddit. It seems like it is human nature to remain in a place long after there become increasingly fewer reasons to do so.