Why would you create an account on every server? You can access any community on any server that your server is federated with.

Why are you browsing on a different instance? Stay on lemmy.world and search for communities from there. You should be able to see like http://lemmy.world/c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml. Note that you are on your instance but the @ tells it to grab the community from the other.

You’ll see it if you search for it and in All, but it won’t be in your Local or Subscribe feed

…and it’s way cheaper than all of OPs suggestions other than the library

You have a right to that job! Everyone gets a bit of Imposter Syndrome every now and then. The realization that the entire World is run, every day, and built up, for centuries, by average people like you, and yet it continues to function relatively well. We are all out here just doing our best, day by day, just trying to do something that makes the World a slightly better place.

I don’t disagree that it’s a weakness. But that just is how it is for now. I’d guess that it will settle down to a few dozen “strong” instances that are all federated together, with hundreds more smaller instances available, but right now there are like 5 super-packed instances (lemmy.world, sh.itjust.works, kbin.social, etc) which are getting killed with a double-whammy: all the users and all the communities are on them.

If you search by the full URL of the sub and make sure that Search is set to “All” it will show up eventually. If you then subscribe, your instance will then be federated and start to receive info from that community but it does take a bit of time to get.

If you join a medium-sized but weeks-old instance then it is likely to already have been federated and you won’t have much of a headache.

Create an account off of lemmy.world and see if you have the same issues. A smaller instance can handle things easier. It have 2 but use the one that was most up-to-date and responsive.

Same here. I have a 9 year account on Reddit with only a few hundred posts and karma; by the time I found something worth posting about anything I posted would either drown out in the noise or essentially already be posted.

This is correct; until someone on those remote instances searches (or maybe subscribes?) then the c/ultralight won’t be federated to those remote instances. You should use a larger community as your test case, if you are trying to verify federation, or take is a sign that your (very niche?) ultralight community just hasn’t got many subscribers yet.