I can’t help with “now” but it definitely wasn’t locked the whole time. I used to have an account on Misskey.io without any issues or need for VPN (that was before they changed the registration rules though).

I realize that but even those daily updates don’t seem to catch everything. When I tried to bring some life to a community I was interested in it took a few weeks of activity before it showed up on the list. It’s a great tool but it’s not perfect.

Nice, didn’t know about this one.

Yeah, it can take a while before new communities show up. Not much can be done about it I’m afraid.

Are you looking specifically for a community for communities? If not there’s also Lemmy Explorer.