I also thought it was perhaps that I wasn't following either @ryan@snarfed.org or @me@snarfed.org (through my native mastodon.social account), but that doesn't seem to be the issue. In fact, it won't let me subscribe to either as a stand-alone instance and gives me a "422Validation failed: Username has already been taken" error when I try.

I'm sure it's early days yet, but Kudos on what you've got working so far! I'll take a stab at using it all with Known in a few days as well, though I've got some quirky issues with my likes and reposts there that may need to be ironed out on my install first.