As the name implies, just wanted to ask whether it is normal to not to see posts from the communities where your subscription request is still pending. I checked the page of the community and found that there had been activity there, but none has shown up, leading me to believe that it might be a federation issue.
Never used Lemmy until now, so any and all advice is very much appreciated.
Yes and no.
Pending means the sub hasn't gone through to the home instance of the community. If you're the first subscriber, this means the there will be no inbound federation bringing the content from that community to your instance.
If someone else on your instance has already successfully subbed, the federating is already occurring, and your instance will be receiving the activity as it comes in.
Your instance will then show it to you, both in your subscriptions and in general, even though the sub is pending.
If your sub stays pending, you may have to unsub and resub to get it to work. If no-one else on your instance has subbed either, then the activity will continue to not show up for as long as it is pending.