Yeah I remember instance hopping when I first joined Lemmy, part of the flood of new users when Reddit announced the API changes that killed mobile apps. Not one instance was working 100% of the time; I signed up on at least 4 different ones and had to keep swapping between them.
Not sure where you’re getting that 80 to 90 percent figure, but most users being on new reddit is not at all a reflection of preference, it’s of new being the default option