All browsing was a thing on Reddit too. So I think it’d be fair to say it’s a style of usage some people just prefer or reach for (whether that applies to you)

Sure, for other people, but not me. I never casually browsed r/all. I visited it a couple times, and it was always nonsense I didn’t care about. The average Lemmy user is more similar to me than the average Reddit user, so all is usable. Although the average Lemmy user is still a fair bit less similar to me than the average Reddit user of the communities I was subscribed to, so if subscriptions were viable I’d use them on Lemmy too.

Unless one uses “New” or “scaled” sorting, surely it’s the big communities that dominate the All feed such that subscribing could easily achieve the same?

i guess so, but I often scroll long enough to run into the bot-posted reddit reposts with no upvotes, so I’m definitely interested in seeing all the content on Lemmy. Of a more relevant nature is that I don’t see posts to remote communities unless a fellow lemmy.ca user is subscribed to them. I ought to subscribe to more remote communities.

Wouldn’t there be a trade off with interest or relevance being less in the All feed?

Sure is, I have no desire to click on about half the posts I see, although that number trends upwards quick when I start scraping the bottom of the barrel. But again, I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel, so it’s not like I’m missing any interesting posts.

Lemmy just doesn’t have enough activity that I can use the subscribed feed and be satisfied.