What do you mean by "no algorithm"? There must be something controlling the order of "hot" vs "new"? Or do you mean the kind of algorithm that shows you suggested communities?

I think there's a lot of value to the algorithm, but it needs to be based on real engagement rather than arbitrary bullshit that a soulless corporation wants to promote.

I subscribe to a lot of people, but not all of their content is worth seeing. Having it curated down to just the stuff that's actually popular can be nice. It's definitely tricky to make that work in a fair and useful way though.

And thanks to activityPub there is interoperability between services. I only have a Mastodon account, but I can follow people on pixelfed without problem. It moves the focus back onto communicating rather than being on the platform