> there's too much friction required to find their communities and aggregate them into a single usable feed with a nice client.

This is what old reddit did so well. You just open reddit.com and you see a dense wall of stories, along with vote count, number of comments on each story, and which subreddit that particular story came from.

All in ZERO clicks. No images or graphics at all, aside from little thumbnails you can easily ignore. Minimal, dense, and clutter-free.