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.
Some people are building systems on top of Mastodon, for example https://fedistats.cc/trends In the end something like “plug in your own algorithm” would be great.