@pieceofthepie @osma "non-standard user lookups" may explain a lot of it. For example, Pixelfed appears to see me with the server domain, instead of the identity domain, and then fails to fetch the avatar.
It's also likely I'm just misdiagnosing something and as soon as I figure out what I'm doing wrong, I can also fix it.
So I've had this instance of Takah\u0113 @takahe running for a bit over a week now, and after a bit of hit-and-miss with the setup at first, it seems to be seeing posts with no issues. However, there are a few things which prevent me from switching from my current account @osma to it as a daily driver..
1. The current version of Takah\u0113 does not migrate follow graph from Mastodon yet. :)
2. Based on symptoms I'm seeing in federation, it seems the Fediverse at large doesn't really like the server domain (social.fishpool.org) and the identity domain (fishpool.org) being different.
3. Something about media propagation is off, but I can't tell what the issue is.
The other lightweight alternative, Wildebeest, appears to have the same limitations.