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
I see new content every day, and that is after blocking a lot of instances that aren’t relevant to my taste. I don’t think this place is dead, it just needs more of those 48k to contribute.