If the paid API wasn't rolled out as a complete trainwreck I'd probably be paying. And probably wouldn't be here, too.

Relay was my app for 12 years so I wish him well with this but I'm not planning on going back to using it or reddit.

Momentum/inertia

If the changes don't directly affect people most of them won't change their ways. That's just how it is.

To get answers to specific questions, written by a actual human. That's the only thing I still use it for. Why deal with pages upon pages blogspam written by bots, when you can simply add site:reddit.com to your searches and get an answer immediately? I can't wait for the day when Lemmy grows enough that I no longer have to do that.

A lot of people are "stuck" because of the content still there, like Psythik said; you either look for info in Reddit or you get to navigate through blogspam. (I do the later because I'd rather not give Reddit more traffic. Screw it. Complex websearching techniques alleviate the issue.)

Others are like this:

I use it because of specific support communities where there isn’t a good alternative or where I’ve built connections.