It is complicated. I follow almost 500 accounts often producing 50 toots per hour. Nobody should spend that much time to catch up with all. My coping tools are:

• Making lists, including one for important accounts I don’t want to miss. Sadly I cant find a way to get notifications for those.

• Resisting FOMO. Remember, mastodon is people-centric, not content-centric like Lemmy. I don’t try to use it as news source or catch all hashtags I care of. Just treat it as a space to casually look what people are talking about.

In general I think that backlash against algorithms went the wrong way. We poured the baby with the water. We should have resisted their harmful use, lack of transparency and user control, rather than the very idea. Controlling what content shows up first and setting your priorities is a good thing. Users should have this power, not corporations and not even admins.