There are a lot of communities I haven't subscribed to since there were only 1-2 other users. I've also noticed that some communities started out strong and seemed to practically die.

But today I was looking for a community and searched through lemmy.world instead of my own instance. Turns out the subscribers never left - I just can't see them. For example:

• if I search !dccomics@lemmy.ml using my home instance on liftoff, I see 2 subscribers
• if I look up the same community using lemmy.world, I see 58 subscribers
• if I look up the community in Google (not logged in), I see 58 subscribers
• if I click on the !dccomics@lemmy.ml link in my own post, I see 110 subscribers
• if I search using my home instance for new communities, say !curatedtumblr@sh.itjust.works , there's 1 subscriber and no posts
• if I access !curatedtumblr@sh.itjust.works through my saved committees list, I can see posts

I've noticed the same issues on !lemmy.world and !sh.itjust.works , but I can only say that for sure because I know those instances should have more traffic. I don't think my instance has defederated with theirs.

Does anyone know of this is an issue with liftoff, lemmy, or simple defederation?