Those recommendation systems have lots of problems, I agree, especially if they optimize for monetary benefit of the platform above all else.
But you need them if you want to have interesting stuff recommended, simple as that. I can’t (and have no interest to) read every Mastodon post ever, same for Lemmy. And I admit it, I don’t even want to read every post my friends make.
Mastodon feels like a torrent of random unrelated comments drowing out anything that might be interesting. I tried it, I don’t see any value in it. Even for following friends it’s unusable, there is the one that posts three times a day and the one that posts once every three weeks, there is no way to ever see one of his posts, unless I specifically go to his profile to look. I’ve given up on Mastodon.
Lemmy needs “sort by controversial” for entertainment purposes.
Bullshit.