Why are community subscriber counts different when watched from different instances?

JohnnyLX91@lemmy.zip to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 21 points –

I created two accounts on two different instances and all the communities I see have different subscriber counts depending from which account I look. Why does that happen and how can I see the real subscriber count?

6

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but here's how I understand it:

Say you have two instances A and B that are federated together, and you have a community C in B.

If you look at C from within B, the subscriber count will give you the number of subscribers from B and will ignore the ones from other instances.

If you look at C@B from within A, you will see this time the number of subscribers who have their accounts on A.

Why did you formulate it so complex? 😂

The subscribers are from your local instance. The end.

But is this true?

If member 1@A subscribes to B/c/C instead of A/c/C then will B's subscriber count include 1@A?

If that's true you would have to say: The subscribers displayed are those subscribed to that instance, regardless of where their account exists.

Which would mean the most accurate count would be the original community.

Is there a way then to see all subscribers from all instances?