I sort by active and this is how my feed looks. Except I see the duplicates every 5-6 posts. But I see the same ~10 posts for maybe 100+ with a few non-duplicates sprinkled in. Same with sorting by hot.
And then 24h later, it's the same feed, with the same duplicates.
36h later and still maybe 1/2 are the same duplicates from 2 days prior.
It's pretty bad, finding threads I'm interested in keeps getting harder and harder.
Sorting by new or new comments does not usually result in seeing the same post across multiple instances all bunched together like this. This is what you'd see sorting by Hot or Active or just looking at your subscriptions when youre subscribed to multiple communities centered around the same topic.
I have been sorting by New Comments since a week into using Lemmy and even though I am subscribed to multiple duplicate communities, I rarely if ever see two of the same exact posts side by side. Those I do tend to be posted by the same user in the same short amount of time.