When creating a new account we show a list of ~40 suggested follows (should be the same as explore -> for you on the web client). I'm debating just auto-selecting them (possibly with a “skip" button).
I don't want to be accused of forcing people to follow other users, but the first launch experience when not following anyone is pretty terrible.
My guess is that most will tap continue without even reading anything. So it's an auto-follow but for a good purpose...
Thoughts?
Since a few have asked. The list comes from the individual instance (mastodon.social in this case). The admin can make changes to the list, a user can opt themselves out of it. It's not separated by any kind of “category”. Outside of the two company accounts we just show what the server returns.
My gut says that anything short of having a diversely populated timeline on launch is going to cause most users to run the app once, delete it and then go complain on Twitter that Mastodon is too hard.
As far as following hashtags, this is what comes back from the API. Not a single one of these will be relevant in a couple of days and I didn't even understand a number of them.
Federated timeline? Obviously its instance dependent but there's a bunch of NSFW and bot content on the ones I've looked at.
Paul Haddad 
Flo