When you say “It isn’t big”, you’re comparing it to reddit? That would basically dwarf all Lemmy instances combined lmao.
This post was comparing Lemmy instances with other Lemmy instances. Hexbear was its own website for a while, and only decided to start trying federation like a few months after the whole reddit thing. They’re fine on their own even, so I don’t know why people keep acting as if they necessarily want to be federated.