I honestly do not mind it one but. I quite like the interface. It’s minimal but there are some bugs to it which is to be expected. I really do like the overall design of it though. There isn’t too much going on. It’s like old Reddit which I am a big fan of
I think they’re “communities” here?
Do moderators have the ability to “require approval” for new subscribers? I’d assumed that “pending” meant that someone had to “let me in” because that’s how they chose to run their corner of the internet (which is great).
Is it actually just lag/a tech issue?
As far as I can tell, this is only an issue if you’re the first one from your instance to subscribe to that community in the other instance. This is because your instance has to tell the other instance to start sending new posts its way. As well as any other subsequent updates. Lemmy instances work on a queue, so it may be a while before the other instance gets to that request if they have a lot of load.
EDIT: This doesn’t seem to be just for the first person to subscribe. I guess so that the list/count of subscribers is accurate every subscription does indeed make a server-to-server transaction. The rest is accurate, though, your instance will have to tell the other instance to start sending updates over.