I noticed that many of the apps (Mlem, Memmy, etc.) have issues with pulling in latest content, even when searching communities that have thousands of users in them, will come back as no content.

Then you add all the defederation and community blocking and it can seem dead when it really isn’t.

I’ve been tempted to run my own instance for myself only, just to get a raw feed of other instances/communities and decide for myself what to block.