The paper touches on this in its introduction. I can't explain how they did it, because the details are too technical for me.
However, the method they used comes from this paper here, where they reconstructed an extinct archosaur's legs by using an extant crocodile species. If I understood it correctly, they were able to verify the technique by then applying it to a gorilla's shoulder.
There's a "Goldilocks Zone" when it comes to amounts of users that Lemmy is still pretty far from IMO. A few hundred thousand people would already make the place feel alive without losing the communal feeling, like what Reddit had around a decade ago or more.
Good thing about Lemmy being open-source is that any Lemmy Enhancement Suite type improvements could go right into the source code.
@prothy
@terefere.eu