Yep. But I do genuinely think there is a path to adoption, not with a centralized source, but a centralized "sink" (the client). The "aggregation theory" model could apply here, and the Apollo/RIF apps have a unique opportunity to implement it, because they already have a loyal user base to bootstrap activity across whichever Lemmy backend(s) their users prefer.
Another feature that would help with bootstrapping would be something like a "Reddit bridge," i.e. a Lemmy instance that proxies requests to Reddit and allows you to authenticate your Reddit account so you can read it and post comments to it like any other Lemmy instance.