@R05 I think I must be doing something wrong then.. I don't see a bell icon. (see screenshot, i am scrolled all the way to the top, and i've refreshed my browser window)
I ended up turning to discord, and they were able to fix the issue. It's a setting under general/settings/notifications.
I don't really understand why replies to posts is not turned on by default, imho that should be checked otherwise new users will post, and never get replies, and then think the service is lame/not useful and bail back to reddit. Just my two cents