But but but... I want the little offshoot niche community to grow! I also want content to get seen by more than 5 people.

In reality there just isn't the user mass to make small/niche communities viable right now, so you see more general communities filling the void.

An easy example is 3D printing. There are two 3D printing communities in the lemmyverse. There's also a 'fix my print' community that's a ghost town and a few printer specific communities that are also ghost towns. Posts in these more specialized communities tend to get a consistent level of votes, but very few comments.

I've intentionally been trying to seed more content, but it's hard without literally posting the same thing in two spots.

I do wonder what the solution to this problem even looks like. Cuz I agree issa problem

I follow one for news articles. I don't need nor want the comments. I also follow several news communities from lemmy; just a way for me to aggregate.

You can easily block them