Why is https://[your lemmy instance]/communities/listing_type/All/page/1 different for every instance? https://lemmy.ml/communities/listing_type/All/page/1 shows asklemmy at 2.09k users per month, but https://lemmy.directory/communities/listing_type/All/page/1 shows asklemmy@lemmy.ml at 1.51k users per month.
It feels like user accounts need to be abstracted away from instances somehow. Federation means it’s almost meaningless which instance you register with, and as integration between instances and other Fediverse apps gets better it will just become more and more meaningless. It should be possible to just “Join Lemmy” and have the servers behind the scenes handle spreading the load. You should be able to login to Lemmy from Beehaw.org or Lemmy.ml or any other Lemmy instance. The way it works at the moment is kind of like content is global but accounts aren’t and it feels like it should be the other way around?
Is this the same for Kbin magazines? I tried doing this with gaming@kbin.social and got the same Subscribe Pending thing mentioned in the OP.
[Edit] I assume it’s related to this: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/10415/kbin-quick-update