Mastodon is is the 5th or 6th social media platform I've engaged with in a serious fashion, but it's been awhile since I had to start a profile from scratch. In the process I have relearned the one constant truth of all social media -- until you have accumulated at least 300-400 connections, the flow of information is going to seem skewed and limited, and you are going to wonder whether it is worth your time and effort.

Thus, echoing what others have said, you need to do more than just set up a profile and lurk, thinking an algorithm will direct information your way. You need to peruse the "Following" and "Follower" lists of people whose contributions you find interesting, then connect. Start with your local server and its Group and Profile directories (much easier to do from the web instance). Look for people you have followed on other platforms, and then look through their connections. The distributed nature of the fediverse (the so-called siloes that seem to cause a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from people still clinging to twitter) can make it a bit more difficult to find and connect to people quickly, but patience will be rewarded. Take the time to dip into other people's timelines, and connect to those that maintain interesting and active feeds. You will quickly notice a perception of increased 'quality' in your newsfeed once you have a few hundred links.

To further enrich your newsfeed, make use of the 'Domain Subscription' tool available under 'Follow and followers' selection at the lower left of your Profile page. If a bunch of people you follow have their profiles on another server, chances are that the local community is home to others sharing their interests. By entering a subscription to their server, the local newsfeed they receive will be shared in your feed. Over time, you will then be able to pick out others to follow and correspond with.