@snugglybun neat! so basically "the stuff that sucked before still sucks (arguably more) now, but we have a lot of new stuff that sucks a lot less".
i used to host my own server (i believe conduit?) but found my use of it vs. discord made maintenance more of a needless chore. cinny and fluffychat were already my choice of client app, and i recall my only issues were lack of compatibility with some server APIs (conduit did also have a really poorly-documented administration API iirc)
i might look into making an account with blahaj.zone or federated.nexus for the sake of getting involved again!