I don’t know enough about how all this works yet to specifically and accurately answer your question.

OPs question had to do with Piracy@lemmy.ml. If I go to the communities I’m subscribed to, I can see both Piracy “subs” (I believe called an instance here). So if I click on the link to that other one (Piracy@lemmy.ml) I still see older posts. However, when I’m there, the full link is “https://lemmy.one/c/piracy@lemmy.ml”.

So I’m assuming you’re saying that means I’m looking at a cached instance? Although, @lemann says below that “The community isn’t removed, it still exists at https://lemmy.ml/c/piracy@lemmy.ml but not https://lemmy.ml/c/piracy although it’s the same instance.” I can go to that link and see newer active posts, but when I try to subscribe to it (by searching for “!piracy@lemmy.ml”) I can’t seem to locate it the way I have others that have been outside my instance.

I don’t plan on going back to Reddit, but this fragmentation is rather frustrating at the moment.