I'm as confused as the next guy, but I'm hanging in there! I'm not sure if the decentralized nature means I'm missing communities because I'm looking in the wrong place, or if there's just fewer stuff around.
I feel the same, but it helps to not just browse "subscribed" but to also check out "local" and especially "all"
You can also take a few minutes and check out the "communities" overview and join those you recognise by name or browse a few of them to decide if you want to join them.
It does not matter on which instance most of the time. Also, I am subscribed to similar communities on different instances, cause why not. Worst case scenario: I get duplicate news.
Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I think that you will see more stuff in All if more people from your instance are subscribed to more communities from other instances.
When you follow a remote community, it doesn't send all of that servers posts. Only posts from that comm. That way, if I'm hosting a small server and subscribe to [email protected], for example, it won't drown my server with the rest of lemmy.worlds posts.
Does that mean what I see in All is a combination of instances my instances is federated with + the comms that users from my instance are subscribed to? So if my instance is federated with another instance and no one from my instance is subbed to any of the comms from that other instance then no one from my instance will see posts from that instance in All?