while going through another instance with the link (lemmyrs)

Oops, good catch, that was causing the problem.

Your instance is able to subscribe, but I’m failing on some other instances remote to lemmy.ml

I suggestion that someone create a shell client stress-test app for the server API. Do a login, do a listing of postings, do a listing of communities, access a user profile, access a posting with 10 comments and another with 150 comments, etc… Measure the response time and output it in a simple format that different admins can share and identify slow areas within the lemmy_server code.

The problem seems to be rooted in the lack of generating enough dummy test data for the lemmy-server app… it was only incrementally tested with low activity that was on the Lenny network before May 2023… now it is 100x or more data in the comments, upvotes, users, etc.

Each new comment and posting is making servers slower, the SQL is jut not scaling with the current table structures and JOIN usage.

There are some developers starting on new frontend apps: https://lemmy.ml/post/1199330

lemmy-ui - webapp you are using - doesn’t have ability to follow users. You can block or message them, that’s about it.