I did a search from shitjustworks for “reddit die” and did not find https://lemmy.world/c/watchredditdie so I made https://sh.itjust.works/c/watchredditdie (unnecessarily). This should really not happen. When someone makes a community there should be a “ping” sent out to notify all other federated instances.
And from what I know, if I post to !sh.itjust.works/c/watchredditdie only users on sh.itjust.works will see the posts until other people from other instances randomly come across it somehow and subscribe? This really needs to be improved.
If instances don’t want to federate with some or all other instances, that is their choice, and that’s on purpose. Some just want to have smaller communities, stronger moderation, and sometimes be entirely private.
If you’re looking for instances that federate with most, you should choose yours accordingly. And I think you won’t have an issue with that, because most popular instances chose to go this route.
This is not about federation between instances. It’s about how community discovery within federated instances works. Currently it’s definitely sub-par.