Once you understand that federation is a process managed by each instance it is easier to navigate communities
Your account is on an instance (server) that will only see communities on other instances if someone on your instance has already subscribed to that community
If you joined a large instance you might already see a lot of communities in your feed that you can subscribe to, but you might be missing some that exist but won’t show up in the search
A solution is to use lemmyverse.net or a similar site. You set your home instance, then search for communities. It gives you links that open on your instance where you can subscribe to (or block) communities. You do this in a browser, and it immediately reflects in the apps
e: If you are coming from reddit and just want to know what communities align with a particular subreddit, you can use sub.rehab then search for the community on lemmyverse
Once you understand that federation is a process managed by each instance it is easier to navigate communities
Your account is on an instance (server) that will only see communities on other instances if someone on your instance has already subscribed to that community
If you joined a large instance you might already see a lot of communities in your feed that you can subscribe to, but you might be missing some that exist but won’t show up in the search
A solution is to use lemmyverse.net or a similar site. You set your home instance, then search for communities. It gives you links that open on your instance where you can subscribe to (or block) communities. You do this in a browser, and it immediately reflects in the apps
e: If you are coming from reddit and just want to know what communities align with a particular subreddit, you can use sub.rehab then search for the community on lemmyverse