So far tuhat's content has been very high quality, the ~1000 word minimum and lack of public comments make its use for spammers not very appealing. And a user only gets one post per day listed on the homepage. There are some more moderation / spam detection tools built in to remove "bad" users.
Additionally for non English users, the language specific pages eg. https://tuhat.net/es see lower traffic.
Ideally European countries would ban all US tech companies and actually invest in home grown solutions. Already some good pro open source policies. Just take it a step further and take a stance on digital sovereignty
I agree that's part of the problem, but not the whole picture. The business models behind these companies is what influences the algorithm.
Also there's the designed algorithm that optimizes time on site by decidcing what you see but there's also an implicit algo that is being hacked. Its our basic primate brains that were never setup for the potential of social recognition by more than our village. Checking for a new like, a comment etc, that's what hooks us, then the algo adds the jet fuel on top.
Whats interesting is that this "We don't care about the code, we care about the outcomes" was common management speak for years before AI was on anyone's radar. In some ways it made sense, it was what distinguished your junior programmer from the senior engineer. One worried about the function, the other about how the systems would interact. But it also swept a whole bunch of technical debt and ticking time bombs under the rug. It allowed the ship it quickly and let it be someone elses problem in 2 years when no one can read this garbage, its slow as mud and will require a full rewrite to add one new feature.
AI and its use encouraged use, feels like gasoline poured on that existing mindset.
Additionally for non English users, the language specific pages eg. https://tuhat.net/es see lower traffic.