I still believe all the big subs are just bots. Yes, social media communities tend toward an echo-chamber (that’s true on Lemmy and Mastodon depending on your instance and the people and communities you follow) but Reddit’s echo chambers are on another level. It’s basically that “danger to our democracy” video in written form.
I like to be surprised on the Internet. I like to hear and read something I haven’t heard or read before, and on Reddit, outside of some niche small communities, that’s not possible anymore. I suppose a part of it is because the powermods have way too much power on Reddit and they’re very ban happy even for total bullshit. So over time, only bots and people who can conform to the ever tightening rules stay on.
A big part of it is just choosing the right instance. If you have any niche hobbies or interests, try to find an instance catering to that. My first mastodon account was on mastodon.social and I really didn’t like the experience, since most posts seemed to be about American politics and IT.
But then I found an instance catering to heavy metal fans, and the experience has been much better. When you find a good instance, you can find interesting accounts to follow just by visiting the local timeline. Then, as other said, there are hashtags. And sometimes, you can open the federated timeline too, and just look randomly.
I really like that aspect of Mastodon because it feels like the old old Internet where you found interesting stuff mainly accidentally and by searching for things you’re into.
Now that I’m mentioning the very old internet, I’m reminded of StumbleUpon and I wonder if some implementation of that would work on the Fediverse for finding communities and accounts. Basically you’d tell the system your interests and then it would give you random stuff based on that.