I’m not sure how to word it. Basically if I’m browsing All on lemmy.world, I see a post I like on a community on lemmy.ml. To join that community on lemmy.world I have to copy/remember the community then go to search and add it through there.
Easiest way I can think to do this is when viewing a remote community and you tap the Subscribe button, it says “this is on a different instance, do you want to add it to on your instance instead?”
I came with the Reddit surge so let me know if any of my assumptions are wrong.
I don’t really understand your issue. You cannot subscribe on an instance on which you don’t have an account, so you always subscribe on your “home” instance. And for me, Liftoff does exactly the right thing. My account is on feddit.de, and I just subscribed to !liftoff@lemmy.world, and just to make sure, I had Liftoff list All posts, tapped on the community-link for “AI Generated images@sh.itjust.works”, and then tapped “subscribe”. Sure enough, I’m now subscribed to “AI Generated images@sh.itjust.works” on feddit.de. Witness the beauty of federation.
