Apologies for yet more dumb questions. Not sure if it’s a Thunder thing or a Lemmy thing.

When I go to search for new communities, I only get the option now to search within the instance I signed up on (Aussie.zone) instead of everywhere. Have I accidentally changed a setting somewhere?

  • leo@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    9 months ago

    It’s how Lemmy works: Your instance can only search what it knows.

    It didn’t use to be like that.

    Maybe I misunderstand something here, but this was always the case.

    • Lophostemon@aussie.zoneOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      Well I’m confused because a few weeks ago I’m sure I used Thunder to browse for communities outside ‘mine’.

      • leo@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        9 months ago

        Your local instance search will return communities from other instances if somebody on your instance already subscribes to them.

        As others already pointed out, search for the whole URL otherwise.

        • Lophostemon@aussie.zoneOP
          2·
          9 months ago

          AHH!!! NOW! THAT’S interesting! How curious!!! What a whacky phenomenon!

          So in theory, if I set up a new account and subscribed to all 26k communities, (made up number) then everyone else on ‘my’ instance could see them too!

          • leo@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            9 months ago

            Yes.

            I even saw scripts which mass subscribe to popular communities to populate new instances.