But that's the problem I think. 1% of quality posts from a giant instance will always be bigger, more diverse, and with higher chance of containing an amazing

But that's the problem I think. 1% of quality posts from a giant instance will always be bigger, more diverse, and with higher chance of containing an amazing thing that 100% of whatever small instance you are on. Plus now you have to do your homework: what is it federated with? What are the rules? And what's more, the recommendation system on mastodon is very limited, so you are basically stuck with what's trending for everyone or your subscribe list. Maybe you have a good instance to recommend for programming?