It’s been about 5 years since I’ve really engaged at all with most of Reddit, the API drama and renewed push to populate the alternatives seems to have achieved exactly what you describe. I even think the small barrier to entry for registering an account in the Fediverse is filtering people.

Many of us have been longing for something like this to happen.

It’s true, any developer in any space knows that core functionality is often built quickly, while refinement and beautification can swallow up enormous amounts of time.

Combined with my experience being that the dev guy and the UI/design guy are rarely the same person, and the former is way more inclined to create things for fun and give them away.