The API is basically a means to link external services and apps (and bots) to lemmys backend. In this case of what counts for API issues, is that all lemmy instances have a hidden web page that broadcasts its currently created community feed as well as other data too. The creator of lemmyverse.net (I'm a friend of his, he's super nice) has a bot that goes to each lemmy instance it can and finds that hidden page and compiles the data it can find. For whatever reason, right now lemmy.worlds just doesn't compile properly as it will scan the first 1-98 page of communities off that page. But since there's ~9k communities that lemmy.world has, it should actually be around 180 pages. And once it hits that final page, it just flips out since it can't find more and it starts to cause issues with lemmyverse.net entirely and its ability to display other instances. It was disabled temporarily, but will likely be reinstated as things improve. There's suspicion it has to do with the DDOS attacks lemmy.world is experiencing, but we aren't sure and it's understandable why they won't clarify if it is or not since going fully into detail how they are being DDOSed breaks ethical disclosure.

https://lemmy.world/api/v3/community/list?limit=50&amp;page=1220000&amp;type_=Local&amp;show_nsfw=true <- this is specific link that sniffs out on each instance, it's very broken right now.