My "Diagnostic Data" is set to "Basic" in the normal Settings UI. I'm on the "2004" release of Windows 10.
Anything I have to do to experience this? What kind of applications/apps are causing the freeze?
They may have even further consolidated these endpoints into something else. I went through this exercise last year after network debugging a family members game that was hanging, only to find Akamai was down in my area for the activity endpoint. It is a never-ending arms race of whack-a-mole.
Another thing you can do is clear cache on your windows machine and router, then reboot and watch DNS requests as you launch applications. If they merged activity into a common endpoint, you should still see the requests.
"activity.windows.com" was previously cached at the network resolver (before block/cache clear), but hasn't re-appeared and there's nothing obvious that replaces it during app or application launch.
The machine has been both cleared and rebooked just for good measure (as it could be cached inside the telemetry service itself).