legit saw someone on mastodon complain that mastodon didn't let them quickly discover all the people and topics they had followed before, and I am now genuinely wondering what life is like for these people who live on the edge of cosmic time and can't tolerate having posts from just ten people on their timelines.
What most people say they want: an organically grown and cultivated social media feed that balances variety and frequency without being overwhelming.
What most people do:
there's a pretty stark generational divide on ao3 between people who haven't been dealing with the algorithm hose as a default thing and people who have leading to the latter group complaining either that they want the site to use an algorithmic recommendation engine (either to see more new stuff or to get their own stuff more heavily promoted) or that the algorithm (that does not exist) is too difficult for them to understand
we have been dealing with the algorithm for so long that it has effectively gotten a lot of people addicted to it, both expecting and desiring it to be there