I think I am fairly happy with how Mastodon and other microblogging softwares work together using hashtags instead of algorithms. However for some reason Peertube and to a worser extent Pixelfed has not really opened up for me. I hypothesize it is due to:
Shortage of good content (videos and photos require more work, ofc).
Discoverability (hashtags do not truly describe the content or quality of a visual media)
Some other technical detail (protocols or UI/UX)