@lydiaconwell I don't like vanilla Mastodon really much either. That's why I'm on an instance that's gone beyond the basic features.

For example, I can follow people I do NOT follow. That is to say, I don't follow them the normal way, but more like RSS-feed style subscribe. I can't see their private posts, but I can see all their public posts and put those people in a list of my choosing. That way you don't have to actively follow bots either, just 'subscribe' to them.

My list has the 'Home' in there by default, so I can uncheck people from there and check them in another list. (If I uncheck them first, I actually unfollowed them by accident heh). That way I can dump them in a list and not get spammed by them in my home timeline.

I guess vanilla Mastodon doesn't seem to have those features.