The OP has a point. It is difficult for non-technical users to find the content they are seeking on Mastodon. Hopefully the new search features will help, but there are not enough instances on the version that allows for the extended search (beyond hashtags.)
There is also the issue with the anti-capitalism culture on Mastodon that limits the exposure of posts from creatives. The feeling seems to be anything promotional or that promotes posts is bad. Why shouldn’t there be a way to discover what others are favoriting? Why not have a “top posts” feature or other way of discovering great content from across the fediverse?
I think this is especially true with communities, like the kink community, that get shunned on many other social networks. (And yes, ensure minors are protected.) The CW isn’t enough because it isn’t specific enough for filtering and must be applied to each post (or all posts automatically.) There needs to be a way to designate the general type of CW that is filterable & searchable (ie politics, violence, sex, etc.)
Yes! I think the problem with complex algorithms is that they can be exploited, yet they are helpful for content discovery. The trick is to identify the content as organically as possible with as few ways to game the system as possible. Of course, now I’m getting way off my original comment. In no way do I have any expertise on algorithms and how easy/difficult they are to implement. I’m merely observing that they may serve some use to simplifying content discovery for less tech savvy users.