Both Mastodon and Lemmy have this problem. Make the default where the most new content is, which is going to be the federated tab and all tabs respectively.

Since I can’t reply to anyone and am having to refresh other instances to see them: Languages were originally set to English and Unspecified for site and my user, I tried selecting them all and nothing changed. I can’t see any of your replies locally, so I’ll have to reply on the main thread :/

I guess it’s obvious, but I can successfully post from my test instance to federated topics as well, so I’m not sure what isn’t working.