@kirby I'm still pretty new to the fediverse and social media in general (this is my first social media account if you can believe that). So finding people to follow was a chore at first. Hashtags helped a lot on that, because like I mentioned this instance is pretty big so there are plenty of hashtagged posts get federated to my timeline.

I don't know if I am in the minority here, but I like my art and photography spam. So by following some popular hashtags I get a lot of those without following even one account (I do then follow those I like that appear on my timeline). There however isn't that many "text-only" hashtags in use. Like I can't just follow a <common sport event> etc.

Groups do alleviate the need for hashtags, if people actually used them! So I can see not needing hashtags if those would finally get popular.