@ouij FWIW: I'm on an instance-of-one and my feed is far from dead, quite the opposite, I have to find ways to slow things down. It is true though that it takes time (and effort) to establish a small instance.
In theory, if users on your instance followed one user from every single other instance out there, your instance would get access to every public post made. That isn't feasible, of course (there are 25k+ instances out there), but indicates ways to get around that somewhat.
One would be for your instance admin to add relays to your instance. Then your instance would get all public posts made to all other instances on the same relay(s).
Another way of increasing incoming traffic for a users home feed is for that user to follow hashtags. It will only find hashtags that has passed by the instance to start with, but it might be more relevant to see hashtags you follow than to stare at the "federated" or "world" (or whatever it might be called on your instance) feed.
Yet another way could be for a user to follow topics and discussions from Lemmy/KBin. A third way could be to follow Friendica groups for specific topics.
All of the last 3 ways would populate your user home feed with posts from various sources, without you yourself having to follow those users making those posts. But alas, it still is helped by your instance federating with as many instances as possible to start with, which is the "time - and effort - consuming" bit.
@o76923 @youronlyone @feditips