If I had to guess: the culture here seems unusual, and unwelcoming — sometimes even hostile — to diverse opinions (i.e. people who aren’t similarly unusual).
I haven’t met many people IRL who would fit in here. For some visitors, that’s okay (I don’t fit in here, myself), but I think most people would just move along and forget that Lemmy exists.
Being federated, Lemmy is technically capable of being more diverse. It’s a bit ironic that it still ended up being like this.
Also, some images don’t load. I just ignore those, but still people might be put off by broken UX
FWIW, you can access IPFS content with an in-browser IPFS gateway now, so no need to install anything: https://inbrowser.link/
You’ll still need to install something if you want to add/pin content, etc., but the in-browser gateway is convenient for sharing links to IPFS stuff with someone who doesn’t know what IPFS is.