Here's something which I think may be related - and which has apparently been silently introduced over the past 10-14 days (I first began to notice it about that long ago)... the names of most other Players in the Trader, even those who are very well known already to be in Fellowships, no longer have the 'Fellowship' link available in the Tooltip which is shown [browser version] when I click on their names. This happened gradually, and a few Players here and there DO still have the usual 'Fellowship' info link, even now, although most do not.
A Player without a Fellowship was formerly indicated by the 'Fellowship' section of the Tooltip being greyed-out, which also no longer appears.
I wonder why this was changed? It's certainly less convenient to have to directly visit a Player, then use the Fellowship icon in their City Screen to see which FS they belong to, if any. I can't actually see any advantage to making this change - to anyone - unless of course Inno have a reason to want other Players not to be aware of who is in which (or no) Fellowship? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that newly started Cities [with the new Research Tree etc.] can't join a Fellowship until they have completed the Research for it in - IIRC - Chapter II? Very strange.