I still don't know how to use mastodon, I feel like I'm only here to share my stuff and read replies, and less so any kind of discovery of following and engaging with other people's stuff

it seems like there's only a chronological feed of those you follow (which I usually don't like because it skews to the most active people), and a generic feed for your instance (pretty much useless), but no algorithmic discovery thing?

@acegikmo There is also a possibility of hashtags based content discovery, but only on a fully public posts. It has limitations, but sometimes works reasonably well. For example, it's possible to subscribe to hashtags, making it nice for following less frequent topics.
@autiomaa do people actually hashtag posts actively though? and are the hashtag listings algorithmic or chronological?
@acegikmo Chronological, but I think some of the ActivityPub client apps do algorithmic sorting locally.