Hi, I just created the community for my hometown on Lemmy.ca and noticed that within minutes it already has 35 subscribers. How does that work? The town is tiny, I'd be surprised if there were even 35 people from Renfrew on Lemmy at all, let alone eagerly waiting for the community to be created
Bots.
Some instances will auto-sub to new communities. It helps make sure everyone can reach everyone. Nobody on one instance can "see" the new community until someone goes there the first time, so the bots just sub in and it's handled.
At least, that's the explanation I've seen when this has vibe come up before.
Oh yeah that makes sense. I knew there were federation bots but I didn't put two and two together. Thanks for the explanation!