Most recent first. Anything else is manipulation.

Whichever is the least abusable by fascists and corporate greed.

I think it should be simple: newest first.

Reverse chronological of subscribed channels only is the best. I don't want anything "trending" or "promoted", ever. If it's really trending, someone I've subscribed to will share it or link it or reference it.

If you also want to have some sort of "discovery" feed, curated or not, that's fine, too, but don't make it a default.

My preference is simple:

Minimalist Lemmy - ordered by new, chronological (used to be the same on reddit before I stopped) Mastodon - chronological

If I look at how the algorithms on YouTube or Instagram (don't know which category they fall in) treat me, they always surface 80% irrelevant stuff and 20% that is okay but only in the rarest cases mindblowingly good. And that's why on YouTube I tend to ignore the Home tab.

Especially in the short video algorithms, I fucking hate that if you didn't respond within a microsecond you'll now get fed sloth videos or car crashes until you die. I'm all algorithm'ed out.

Personally I prefer those to be the very end thing and would like ultimate ability to filter. Like we have three types of posts (I think) and I would like to be able to say I want to see or not see each type. I love being able to block urls for news sites I don't find have good articles for links. Basically looking at the post blank I would like to be able to filter based on everything that is there. Algorithms to me are a last line and I would prefer to have things like vote or comment thresholds and such.