Probably the nicest bonus feature of Mastodon is that I can subscribe to a friend's original posts but unsubscribe to their "boosts," which is Mastodon's way to quickly share content. This way I can follow artists that make cool stuff I want to keep up with, but I don't have to see their political reblogs and other interactions, which helps to cut down considerably on the noise.

It's great because it's granular at the friend level. Some of my follows do legitimately act as curators, infrequently boosting cool content that I do want to see. Some are more noisy, and I can pick and choose and tailor my own feed accordingly. It's a nice happy medium, one I'd like to see other platforms emulate if possible, but I suspect they won't because the algorithmic feed is much easier for advertisers to pay to manipulate.