Maybe to add to this, there may be folks like me who initially joined on things that became problematic or we wanted something "better" and are now on something different, leading to doubles. Not sure if my older accounts (like kbin) would show up but they might.
I have a few of those. During the reddit exodus when the API changes went live, I had to register on a few servers to finally get a working and stable account. Issues with email or setting up captchas to prevent bots resulted in a few of my accounts not going live until a week+ later on some instances.
It’s not too hard. There are a bunch of different platforms one might experiment with as well as instances. Some will use multiple accounts for different needs or interests. On lemmy, multi accounts are useful for have different feeds, for example. I probably have 7-10. I’ve probably forgotten about a few of them. If you’re curious, it happens.
I wish I didn't have to, but federation for technical or political doesn't work so well so I need an account for Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, and other less popular apps like Akkoma. Though 90% of my activity is on Lemmy.
Honestly me too. It took a while to find an instance I liked plus I like having an account on another instance in case this one goes down or gets defederated.