I hear you. I appreciate you breaking down the conversation too!!
I guess I’d hope discovery could occur through wide spread multi-community suggestions, ideally posted in community sidebars too ( though that’s probably unlikely). I’d also hope the cross post interface gets better, with all cross posts listed (not just those that share a URL), and the ability to view all comments from all cross posts together (maybe with some options around whether you subscribe to them or not).
Beyond that, I’m still not sure we’re in a worse position than Reddit was, apart from currently having a small size?