I do like bsky's "starter packs" as people to consider following - but it does take me quite some time to whip up the courage to reply to people I follow even now ^^;

The indieweb has web rings and blog rolls which I quite like for finding similar things amidst all the slop on the web these days, so having something similar directly within Mastodon rather than having to scroll through dozens of retoots I feel is much appreciated to quickly finding your people as it were.

(For example, how many people are there between me and Epstein? - one, because I once had to shake hands with Mandelson.)

Its not a coincidence that there's a vast amount of radio amateurs / enthusiasts, both licensed hams and those from pirate/CB/scanner scenes who have flocked to the Fediverse, as we grew up searching for signals (especially unusual ones)...

But perhaps that requires building up a critical mass. If you’re not following anybody at all, or only a small number of low-frequency posters, it might take longer to get to that point, which I imagine can be discouraging.

(I also used some recommender services when I started out, but even those require some initial follows.)

> following anyone from the local and global feeds who looked even vaguely interesting, and then dropping the ones who turned out to be less interesting

Snap!

When I first got here nine years ago the way you got over that bootstrap problem was just following anyone from the local and global feeds who looked even vaguely interesting, and then dropping the ones who turned out to be less interesting than they looked. That worked for me, but it requires a commitment I can understand a new user not really wanting to put in.

Discovery through Mastodon and Mastodon forks is a breeze with the ability to follow hashtags, which surface new posts from people I'd never have found otherwise. I've had much less success with discovery using Misskey (and forks), Pleroma (and forks), and Friendica.

Of course, there are the other methods of discovery you describe, but nothing has been as reliably fruitful for me as hashtags followed from my Mastodon accounts.

And perhaps my perspective is skewed by having been here for a Very Long Time, and so I've had the chance to build up a feed of interesting and entertaining people (and you).

I’ve discovered so many interesting things and people while on here that I just didn’t in other places.

Like you for instance

I discover new people from blogposts and articles which display the fedi profile of the author, or just "about" pages of sites.

I discover new people from replies.

etc.