Their failure to do so is inherently their statement to the decentralised nature of the fediverse, that being „Fuck you people, we are the next reddit, and y'all are just trash”.
Lack of updates on LW. At this moment, LW users still can't delete media they uploaded. That was a big deal in March 2024: https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2024/03/04/lemmy-fediverse-gdpr/. Since then, Lemmy allows it since 0.19.4, but LW still runs 0.19.3 (there are plans to update, but at the moment we're speaking, it's still not the case)
Smaller instances can have issues to keep up with LW due to its size: https://lemm.ee/post/28755787 . Again, those issues were fixed in 0.19.6, but LW is still on 0.19.3.
I get it but at the end of the day it's people's choice, the other instances have to do more to make theirs attractive
(At the end of the day it's still better to have them here than not have them here on lemmy, That is my thinking*)
That's kind of a structural problem with the fediverse itself. The whole appeal of social media is interacting with people. Less people, less appeal. The fediverse then takes its inherently smaller pool and splits it across different servers, especially once you account for defederation. Instances like lemmy.world are the natural result. Despite the structural drawbacks, a centralized social media with all users in the same space is inherently more appealing to most users
I want lemmy to be decentralised, so it can benefit from the decentralisation that Lemmy offers. It can be as big as you want, but if only one instance houses 95% of all users, then why even use a decentralised Service when you can just use reddit?
As a metaphor: you don't make Linux the next big thing by copying windows, because it is not windows. The same way you can't become the next reddit, if you just copy reddit and hope all the people won't be confronted with the decentralised nature of the fediverse. You will loose just about all non tech savvy people if (or more when) .world will be banned because they will think that Lemmy as a whole is now banned. And even if they don't get banned by america, if the mods on world turn out as fascists, or if they turn world into the next reddit and start milking their userbase for money, those non tech savvy people will not know that other instances exist, so they will once again just live in their parallel society on world.
If you want Lemmy to be a centralised website, just go to reddit.
Inertia is a predominant effect for users. Also, a lot of people setup their LW accounts when Sync defaulted to it and have no idea how to migrate as it's not an option in the app