Reddit refugee and Noob to lemmy/fediverse here.
For example, I’m currently logged into my lemmy.ml account, and subscribed to !anime@lemmy.ml and I can see a lot of posts there. I can also see that it has over 3K users.
If I log into lemmynsfw.com, and look at my subscription to !anime@lemmy.ml, I only see a few posts, and I know there are several that are missing. Also, it tells me that the community only has 8 users.
Is this synching problem common in lemmy, and/or the fediverse in general?
Do I have to create a new account on each server hosting communities that I want to keep up to date on?
You are really missing the forest here. I’m registered on a explicitly Marxist-Leninist instance, where I talk to like minded people. I might want to talk to them about Cats, and only them.
However, I’m subbed to a lot of other communities outside of my instance. My subs are synced with my instance and then show up in the All list on the instance for everyone to explore.
There is a instance explicitly for Starteck, startrek.website, it 3 communities. I’m subbed to their c/startrek and my instances c/startrek and both instances engage with startreks very differently.
This is the strength of Lemmy. It’s more likely that over time niche instances will become the norm, where the communities within them are centered around something (a ideology, a brand, a fandom), but because it’s federated everyone can connect with everyone if they wish.