I do the exact same as you, with the exception of a few topic-specific instances, where the local communities are only about that topic. There I will actually use Local as default.
At least on my Kbin instance, going in All and Local opens me up to doom-and-gloom “big corporation and alt-right bad” news and outrage bait.
I agree wholeheartedly with “big corporation and alt-right bad” and that they’re the cause of too many of the world’s big serious problems. I’d also rather spend my time on Kbin enjoying what I see instead of getting mad. I can already find out what horrible thing a corporation or alt-right politician has done from the regular news, without the understandable but exhausting comment chain of outrage.
Even without an algorithm shoving it down your throat, outrage bait will rise to popular status on its own. Unfortunately, getting mad at and feeling superior to the idiotsincars, choosingbeggars, etc. is kind of crack to our brains. I’m no exception, which is why I have to only look at /sub. I have to keep it out of sight, because if it’s in my feed, I’ll click on it and get mad too.
So how do I find new stuff? There’s a lot of communities out there whose purpose is to advertise other communities. I subscribe to those.
The impression I get is that Beehaw is trying to seclude itself not to be an echo chamber, but because an admin saw CP get posted and is traumatized by that, and it’s really highlighting the lack of mod tools. They want to moderate the space to ensure it’s nice (and it’s frankly needed. I made a Beehaw account at one point in time. I reported quite a few not-bigoted-but-still-nasty posts) and right now being federated with everyone makes it way too hard because even if 1% of posts are anywhere from “not nice” to “you literally posted child porn,” 1% of 100 is easy but 1% of 100,000 could be a lot of work.