It looks like literally no one on lemmy.ml was subscribed to !progressivepolitics@lemmy.world, which is perhaps part or all of the problem? IDK. I just clicked “Subscribe”, and my subscription is “pending.”

I’ve always assumed that when my subscription says “pending,” that means no one else on my instance was previously subscribed, but maybe I’m wrong to think that 🤷

Edit to add: several minutes later and it’s still “pending,” which makes me think the problem goes deeper. I don’t sysadmin the instance so this is out of my hands.