It can be that that something serverside was updated and they rolled back a back-up. I just made a post in my community and it still exsists. Can you maybe try to post again?
I mean, we're already browsing ad free on here and many developers are making their apps in their free time. I get that this are expensive times, but if no-one would subscribe to such apps. There would be much less developers.
Yeah the federation thing is a known bug. Lemmy dev's know about it and are working on a solution. :)