You miss-represent the fediverse. Users aren't locked in. If someone buys one instance and you don't like it, you move. You still have all the same access, all the same content. An instance is only an access point, in many ways it is like an ISP, and people jump service providers all the time.
I think splitting the user base between them is probably good. Ideally TV/radio will stop defaulting to "tweet us with the hashtag..." They'll have use multiple channels and that might open the door for Mastodon and the fediverse too.
I'll keep saying it, but I'd like to see another big player (Microsoft, Google etc) embrace activitypub. That would bring balance and snub EEE for Meta.
Sometimes it is, say here:https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverseBut you might as well say why isn't Mastodon included? Kbin is a fundamentally different platform and architecture, even if the two are largely compatible (as is Mastodon, to a slightly lesser extent with Lemmy).It is perfectly reasonable to look at the growth of Lemmy, think of it like quoting use of one flavour of Linux - Linux uptake overall is also interesting, but not the same.
He may be doing it manually, it wouldn't be the first time. When he first got banned from twitter and started publishing on Mastodon he was doing all the updates by hand for a while.
Long term there are ways and means that it could be done via the html front end, it would probably take a little bit more monitoring but there seem to be plenty of people willing to help him!
But then try looking at a few users in this thread (which lets note is on a Lemmy instance). From my spot checks about half the comments are from kbin users?
This seems to highlight a common misconception, kbin isn't really any smaller than Lemmy when we look at active users, in fact it seems it has only just (three days ago) caught up:https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverseSomehow Lemmy seems to have stronger brand recognition, and people often seem say Lemmy to mean things which include Lemmy and kbin users/platforms.
If you figure out a good way let me know! I knew I'd seen this post but to find it again ... well, I used Google to find a discussion on codeburg, and that had a link back to kbin!
...or just ask any kbin user, we can see up and downvotes through the UI. Upvotes are federated, we see everything. Downvotes - more complicated - we won't get the full picture for a post hosted on Lemmy, but we still see downvotes by kbin users.
A saw a post a while back commenting on how many upvotes it was taking to get onto the front page of r/all having dropped, but not sure if there is any way to see stats from before API changes now.
On Mastodon your followers stay with you if you move instances. I expect in time this will also be true here.