Seems to be a bug, I think it happens most frequently when trying to subscribe to a community on a busy instance. It doesn’t seem to affect functionality though, I see new posts, vote and comment, etc. Sometimes if you refresh the page or try again it goes away and says subscribed, but I wouldn’t worry, doesn’t seem to change anything right now. Just assume it means subscribed. I think for this community right now it says “sub pending” for me actually.

It’s a bug, I have been able to tap it and hit Subscribe again and it works after a couple seconds.

Pretty sure it’s a bug. Some of the smaller instances I’ve subscribed to show “subscribed” right away. The larger instances seem to show pending, but as far as I can tell it works as expected.

I am not 100% sure, but I think that is automatic when you sub to a remote community.

It takes a few seconds to subscribe since the server is limited to a finite amount of interactions per refresh. Give it like 30 seconds.

So 2 votes for bug, 2 votes for privacy reasons. I too want to know.

probably the creator of the community want to select who can enter and who cannot, it’s like for private Instagram profile, the owner have to accept your request

as @Wander@yiffit.net said:

the instance is probably overloaded or the instance of that community is defederated from your’s