(even though I understand it’s probably a performance or otherwise concern)

Yes, exactly that. It’s to enable smaller servers to exist without having to download every post & comment from every community on every instance (including some troll spam communities that would inevitably spring up if it was done this way), filling the storage and immediately dying.

That seems kinda like it’s a second-class experience for anyone on a different instance unless I’m missing something.

Ideal setup atm is lots of mid-sized instances, especially if grouped by interest. If 1 person or 10,000 people are subscribed to the same community, it’s the same footprint. It’s actually a relatively efficient way of doing things.

The solution I guess is creating an account on the other instance if you want to see all the older top posts, but then you’re starting to make accounts on multiple instances which is not my personal preference.

Best workaround yet is lemmy.directory. It’s a bot instance that just subscribes to every community it can find. Signups disabled so the server doesn’t explode xD They’ve enabled signups? The absolute madlads.