I asked this question to someone I saw frequently instance hopping and they said it was related to instance federation and the spread of posted content, as well as their desire to advertise lesser known instances. I think it's a little disorienting and creates the opportunity for dopplegangers but it was a much more satisfying motivation than avoiding bans.

I've swapped for various reasons: instance shutting down, defederation by major instance I interest with, etc, downvotes vs no downvotes. I also like having at least two I can easily swap between in case one is down.

Literally every single Lemmy instance I've ever joined (and then some) has suffered significant long-term outages or degradation of service on a semi-regular basis. I don't use any other social media. So, when I'm looking for my "fix", I don't have time to bullshit around and wait for penis.gay to get to the bottom of their their issues. I want my engagement and I want it now. So off to lemmy.wtf I go if it's up.

But also, some of us have serious accounts geared towards specific topics/hobbies, accounts where we might share information that could be publicly identifiable, and farting around shit post accounts all separated out. Easier to keep the creeps away.

• Insurance. Some big instances have closed down, others regularly go into maintenance, you never know when one might decide to enshittify itself. Federation gives us the ability to use a different instance if needed, and it costs nothing to have some accounts ready to use should you be unable to use your main one.
• Compartmentation. Wouldn't want to open the account where I'm subscribed mainly to porn on the bus or at work.
• Access. Not all instances federate with the same set of instances. Having accounts on instances with different federation policies lets you access more of the fediverse.

Of the four real instances in that image, there are three different software platforms.