Not all that many actually. Even traffic itself has only gone down by ~7-14% iirc, and by some metrics it has actually gone UP since the start of the protests!

One main reason is that the technology here is not the same as there - this place does not give that feeling that “daddy will take care of you” that Reddit does. Server outages, constant errors in trying to access content, or vote, or follow someone, you actually have to read a manual to understand stuff, things don’t work so intuitively especially for those wanting an exact replacement (making a “post” won’t work as expected, for that you need a “thread”), and perhaps worst of all, there’s that initial hump of which instance to even sign up to in order to get started (after which it gets much easier, but I bet that legit turns people away). People keep saying that you can transfer over to a new place if you want to later, but that conveniently leaves out how that functionality does not exist yet. So like if you accidentally signed up to lemmy.ml not really how shitty it is and decided that you wanted to join kbin.social instead - kidding btw:-P - you’ll have to leave all the posts and comments and such behind.

We are early adopters here - we like this feeling of “newness” - but we should not delude ourselves: this place is not for everyone, not yet. (and it is an open question whether it should be made to be thus, even?)

Other reasons include people replacing & then deleting their accounts still counts as traffic, and all those pics of sexy John Olivier still count as “content” atm. People have not yet started to feel the burn of subs that no longer have moderators, or that have objectively shittier ones, and many are content to wait out the blackouts for those that are still down (like r/firefox - oh wait that’s back up now, though pointing people to come to kbin, leaving the Reddit community to discuss cute “red pandas” aka “fire foxes” going forward). Until people actually EXPERIENCE the consequences of Reddit’s decisions first-hand, it looks like many have just decided to stay put.

Also, I’m keeping my account there. I’ll check it <1 hr per week instead of multiple hours a day (as a former mod), but I will continue to check in on both, to help my small gaming community deal with this ongoing crisis. Sometimes people will say like “it sucks but what are you going to do?”. For them, again, Lemmy/Kbin is not close to being an option yet. Until apps get better - happening RIGHT NOW - and maybe when old-reddit is killed off too.