It seems anytime I try to check out Mastodon it is always some negative political view or affiliation of why X, Y & Z is bad. Is this just what most people like boosting or is it a sign of botting to push negativity over the more positive headlines?
I do understand I can switch to any Mastodon instance I want and stick to a small community, however I like keeping up with trending topics in the world. Maybe the most popular accounts in the Mastodon community likes to rise up pitchforks every minute.
Weird. I don't see any of that on my Mastodon feed.
It's almost as if I get to choose what's displayed in my feed instead of having it force-fed to me.
I'm thinking that perhaps someone didn't learn how the system works and how to use it and instead just read #Explore. For a sane experience in Mastodon, you need to build a feed by hand (no algorithm will do it for you), build filters by hand, and in general you're far more in control of your experience than you are at places like Echs. I'll peek into #Explore every so often to find new people to add to my feed (and many more people to block from it!), but other than that I don't use it. Precisely for the reasons you cite here.