@staff to be fair one can say the same about the Trending feed, in the sense that it features a pretty homogeneous side of Mastodon that focuses on the same subjects over and over (e.g. exclusive focus on U.S. issues, technology, cats when people have other pets or none at all, etc.) and this can discourage people with more varied interests or lived experiences beyond that. We should be encouraging more diversity of interests beyond those things. The Trending feed does not sufficiently do that, despite the lack of an algorithm.
(this is kind of tangential to my earlier point about moderation, but I still feel it is worth mentioning)