Yup you nailed it. For additional context, Ruud is running an almost identical server for his Mastadon.world server which has 160k users. Relatively speaking, these are large, performant, and expensive servers. They can absolutely handle the current user influx we are getting from the Reddit exodus. Are hands are tied by software limitations unfortunately. I can confidently tell you were are constantly in communication about ways we can amplify user experience with the tools that we do have access to. For instance, this status page was recently spun up which you can access anytime you think there might be server issues to help confirm that what you are seeing is recognized at a server level. Things like that.

All that being said, for users who are looking for a smoother experience right now, I can recommend lemm.ee as a solid home as well. Their admin Sunaurus has been very active and helpful throughout this process and handles his instance very professionally. He is essentially another Ruud (though Ruud is the best! ;)). Just something to keep in mind going forward as I can't make any promises about the time frames for these issues being resolved. Hopefully once we get contact back from the Lemmy devs we can start expediting a resolution. They have a lot on their plates right now though, haha, so we will see. Cheers!