I just made a Piefed.social account today. I’m very familiar with reddit, but after the API changes and all the bullshit that’s been happening with the site lately I want something different. How do I see which communities I’m a part of, the equivalent of subreddits I guess? Where do I go to find new ones? Do I need to be in a singe instance to participate? I’d really like to find the Lemmy equivalent of my favorite subreddits from reddit, but I simply don’t know how to do that.
You could try a Lemmy app that gives you a more reddit-like experience. There are several. I use Sync, but only because it’s what I’m familiar with from the reddit days. There are plenty of alternative (and often better) options. I can find communities from instances my instance federates with in the search bar, and I even have several different accounts in different instances (world, beehaw, hexbear, etc) to see content my instance doesn’t federate with which I can switch to with a dropdown menu easily.
Edit: I assume it’s been explained, but not every server/instance talks to each other instance, called federation. This is often for political, spam, or harassment reasons. It may be worth using alternative accounts or using Lemmy from another instance logged out if viewing content from those communities you don’t federate with is important to you. The big instances federate with mostly everyone, but there are always exceptions.