I don't understand why people still want to use reddit instead of moving to Lemmy or Kbin

We're early adopters. Early adopters have a higher tolerance for (and ability to deal with) things like bugs, confusing UI, uncertainty, and probably continual change for the short term.

But hey, someone's gotta do it. The end result of this will be an established community and a more polished product. Over time, more and more people will show up as this place gets better and better, and Reddit continues to worsen. (Everyone knows that old.reddit is going away, it's just a matter of when.)

The answer can be many things if you go into detail but the summary is change is hard.

Here are the issues for me:

The fediverse is still below an active user threshold that makes it an effective replacement. I'm not saying that it needs to match reddit's size to function, but I joined reddit about 6 months before the digg v4 migration, and it felt more alive then than the fediverse does now.
Much of the activity here seems to be about the reddit protests and migration away from reddit. This, combined with activity below a threshold necessary to make it feel like an effective replacement for reddit's core functionality is a little off putting. (Yes, I realize I'm in /m/RedditMigration, but I'm subscribed to a wide variety of magazines/communities and reddit migration content still dominates my subscription feed) The fediverse needs to show that it is capable of supporting itself with actual content, and I don't think it's proven that yet.
I still don't feel there is any fediverse instance which feels as clean, elegant, and unclaustrophobic as the old.reddit.com UI. Whether that's just my own aversion to change or a legitimate comment on the quality of old.reddit I'm not sure, but there are some aspects of the UIs that are unquestionably rough, like full page loads which could be replaced with AJAX.
The UX in general is a little rough in ways. The entire way the fediverse works is a little intimidating. If you're just looking down the barrel of the kbin registration form that's not a big deal, but if you need to choose an instance, or you're subscribing to communities/magazines and you you see 3 different communities with the exact same name, things can get a little overwhelming.
The jargon which has developed around the fediverse is kind of awkward. Needing to differentiate between kbin and lemmy, magazines and communities... even just "fediverse" is a little weird.
Even if all of the above problems are fixed, I wouldn't see myself abandoning reddit, just due to the sheer size of its activity. However, I would be likely to use reddit as a readonly site.

I think most of these problems have relatively straightforward fixes. As for the UX issues I'd like to see two things:

an instance which combines communities/magazines into "hubs" which users subscribe to simplify the UX. Users could can then tweak their hub experience by toggling which instances feed into their hubs. So instead of having kbin.social/m/news, lemm.ee/c/news, lemmy.world/c/news, etc... you just have something like /h/news and you can configure what's included in /h/news. The mods of the instance's community would determine which communities feed into the hub by default, but users could customize this as they wish.
Better cross-site user and reputation management. I'm not sure exactly how to make this work... but if, when you created an account on once instance, every instance its federated would somehow reserve or automatically create a matching account for you, then the anxiety around which instance to join can kind of melt away. The different instances could become windows into, effectively, the same account and same system.

Just move your community to Lemmy or Kbin. It's not that hard.

No, it is that hard.

You have hundreds/thousands of community members accustomed to a certain user experience that have to start that learning all over again when they move platforms.
You have teams of moderators that have to learn a new set of tools for a new platform.
Less content and inferior experience for everyone until there's headway made on 1 & 2.

Anyone whose worked on a team that had a management shakeup can appreciate this. Anyone who has a friend that refuses to migrate to windows 11 can appreciate this.

Never underestimate the power of comfort and convenience. "It's just too HARD to move!," people will say. "Everybody I know is here!," they'll say. I've heard people say this a lot since the social media collapse sparked by Elon Musk. It's their choice, but I'm not comfortable staying. Maybe in time they'll realize that it's the right time to leave as well.

Not everyone uses a 3rd party app, nor are they eager to disrupt their daily flow by abandoning a platform they have grown accustomed to using.

The people most angry are those who are invested in reddit the most. There are a lot of folks who are way more casual and maybe only care about a couple niche subreddits that relate to their hobbies, but are uninterested in sitewide drama.

Step 1 have you tried to understand? Can you not create a list of plausible reasons? I bet you can

What you just described is literally the hardest thing about social media.

Let me tell you folks, nobody does it better than Reddit, believe me. Nobody. It's tremendous, really tremendous. People ask me, 'Why would anyone use anything other than Reddit?' And I have to say, they're right. Reddit is so easy to use, even the so-called stupid people covfefe can actually understand it. It's just tremendous, folks. Nobody does it better than Reddit.

I think it's that a lot of the people who were protesting have this mentality of, "I'm only protesting if other people are doing it." Unless subreddits have shut down, they themselves aren't getting off Reddit—either because they don't want to have left while their favorite communities continue on the platform or because they don't see the need to continue if they feel Reddit won't change. Many people just aren't willing to stick to their values in these situations if it means missing out or not having an immediate effect.

If you are willing to stick to your values in spite of these, then getting off Reddit (and even encouraging your community to migrate) is a no-brainer. Reddit has disregarded their users' wishes again and again, changing rules and shadowbanning moderators in order to keep their profits. If that's not something you want to support, then you get off Reddit, move to one of the alternatives, and maybe even go outside more.

There’s probably a large percentage of Reddit users that are still getting everything they’re looking for with the official app and what’s left of the site. Quick hits of memes are fun, and I do take some pleasure in correctly guessing the top comments in a thread.

The level of conversation on Kbin/Lemmy reminds me more of what old Reddit used to be like back in the day, and I think I’m okay with that being a smaller community than Reddit at large. I keep reminding myself and others that these communities don’t ever need to be as big as Reddit, they just need to be big enough.

I've been here for about a week now, and still feel like there are features I don't understand or completely overlooked. The concept of the fediverse is simultaneously really simple (e.g. email analogy) and confusing (still not really clear on what makes kbin different from lemmy; and I have to subscribe to like 8 iterations of what is effectively r/worldnews... and there's a fed youtube-like that I haven't looked into yet, but haven't run into here so far... I can see lemmy content on kbin, but I can't log into Jerboa with a kbin account...)

It's a lot to take in.

...and honestly, ^that makes it kinda fun. Reddit gave me the middle finger, so I gave it right back by building my own theme-park with blackjack and hookers. Thoroughly enjoying the blackjack and hookers; but the "building my own theme-park" bit is a challenge - one that I (probably most of us here) find engaging and gratifying, but very much a challenge, and that isn't what everyone's looking for.

When I can show my tech-handicapped boomer mother a 2-minute video explaining the the whats and hows of the fediverse, it'll give the reddits and facebooks a run for their money; until then the fed will remain fairly niche. Which isn't a bad thing - finding and engaging with a niche you enjoy will ALWAYS feel better than engaging with generic shit built for mass marketability.

Subjective bit, but imo our branding also kinda sucks. "Fediverse" sounds like some clunky .gov message board that the FBI uses to share crime statistics with the CIA and ATF. Anything "-iverse" comes off as hyperbolic. "Lemmy" sounds like "lemming". "Beehaw" sounds like an apiary manufacturer based in Alabama. "kbin" evokes imagery of a trash can for...'k'. I mean, it's all nit-picky shit, but the connotation of our chosen labels lean negative. It wasn't a barrier to entry for any of us here now; but you know there are potential users who take one glance at the word "fediverse", conclude that it sounds stupid, and move on without a second thought. All that said, I'm cool with folks like that staying on reddit!

It's similar to playing MMORPGs and then switching to another game. You create an account with a lot of karma that people are proud of, you acquire those avatars and milestones, and you make friends. Then you start in a new place which is not user-friendly as the old one, and you lose everything from your previous account.
Many others, of course, are like me and do not care, but I believe the majority of people do.

The familiarity of Reddit is a huge boon. People think the fediverse is some mystical hard thing (it’s not lol) but they want simplicity.

Most people just want things to work, and once they've become accustomed to a platform, they're reluctant to learn a new one. Especially if it's just getting off the ground. It wouldn't surprise me at all if a lot of the early adopters here have gone through this before and know that things will get better (in terms of functionality as well as content) as time goes on.

Well, after what happened with /r/MildlyInteresting and others, more of us have are starting to feel as if Reddit, the company, has metaphorically declared a wanna-be "war" on the mods. Toss in the statements by Spez the other day about users, who gave the company loads of data for free, somehow being wrong to expect a certain degree of reciprocity and, I might expect a certain increase in migration rates. After all, I am now here. (Hello!)

Inertia is the most powerful force in the universe...of human psychology.

There are many reasons, ranging from not wanting to leave already established communities, Lemmy and Kbin aren't quite as robust as Reddit is yet, and a lot of people just frankly don't care enough to switch. Plus the lack of a mobile for Kbin doesn't help.

Just gotta be patient and win people over slowly when they willing to make the jump :) We may see some more once the third-party apps shutdown at the end of the month.

Kbin and Lemmy are still fairly new so I do not anticipate everyone would be willing to make the jump if it means putting up with relatively small member counts. We just have to put in the extra effort ourselves to keep these communities fresh and active.

Because it still lacks content, is pretty unpolished, and the nature of fedi makes it complicated for a lot of people. That's a lot of barriers, so it's going to be a slow growth from here while these issues get worked on.

Want to start off by saying I love lemmy and I know it's not perfect but things will get better. There are many people though that don't have a high tolerance for bugs. The bug with browsing the All page would probably turn many off. Instances also might be too confusing for some people and they would rather turn back to what is most familiar. I'll admit that I still am a little bit confused about how instances work but I'd rather put more effort into learning about this platform, contributing to conversation to help grow the platform, etc. Not many users would want to put that effort in though because they seek something easy, familiar and maybe mindless to pass time.

Im not sure how much I want people to leave reddit. There was a lot of garbage users and bots and such. Even if all actual individuals left reddit the corpo, bot, other things from some organization elements I bet would be a fairly large populace.

One thing I've seen get in the way is everyone wants their own instance rather than to setup just one community on an existing instance.

So lemmy/kbin doesn't feel the same yet. A lot of the content I viewed on reddit, just isn't here in the same way. I think when the api changes take affect, we will see many more people making the switch as in a lot of subs, the content is posted via api when scrapeing other sources. That mixed with changes in moderation will be catalysts to people moving here full time. I also think there still needs to be some work on the interface. Even the best run instances don't have the same look and feel of reddit. If something feels different, people will resist it no matter how much they want to like it. As much as some people may have thought it would be, this is not an overnight migration.

I think kbin/Lemmy is already showing promise as a community gathering-place, but it's nowhere near useable for being a repository of knowledge like Reddit is - if you want to know how to download videos from an obscure local streaming platform in a small country, hear experiences of doctors treating a specific chronic condition, or find answers to a highly specific scientific question, a quick search with site:reddit.com would usually give you the answer, and if you didn't there would usually be a relevant sub with someone knowledgeable in the field.

It's going to take many years for kbin/Lemmy to reach this status of a digital Great Library of Alexandria (if at all), and so much information is still going to be lost if Reddit shuts down.

Same problem as with any social network migration: the network effect.

Sometimes the largest equivalent Lemmy community for a subreddit is tiny, or worse, nonexistent. Sure, you can go create one, but unless you can also convince other people to join with you, it won't be much fun.

The communities I browse are either small (behavioral science/school) or full of elders who aren’t interested with switching platforms. So that’s a pretty big reason. Some of them have organizations that still have large presences on things like fb. Not having an account hamstrings a persons ability to stay current with professional topics…not great for a lot of fields. Now, this is just my particular instance. But I’ve heard a lot of the same from colleagues and adjacent professions. As for me, my account is deleted and I don’t contribute content meaningfully anymore. Which I suspect is another major downside to all of this, brain drain.

It will take non-early adopters a while. If reddit continues to limp along, there will be people who stick. But I think the real exodus will occur when they IPO. We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg now, wait until there are shareholders and post IPO ad corporations to placate...

Where is everything? Whats with all the "View magazine elsewhere" things?

I fully moved to lemmy myself, but still browse reddit just for the vast amount of information available there.