lack of algorithmic feed (and the whole anti-algo slant) and lack of openly viewable likes on people's profiles are actually gonna backfire. mastodon is gonna get lonely and boring, because it's kinda hard to do content discovery, particularly the kind where you get recommendations based on people you follow or interested in, so that those recs would be in closer proximity to you, rather than just getting random posts from trending. for how much algo stuff (like topics, suggested tweets, etc.) and particularly algo feed gets talked shit about, it's vital to discovery of new posts and new people.
without those things, it's easier to just run out of stuff and people to see, and end up in a place where you're caught up with things, and new people aren't entering your circle, and the activity just stops. well, it is also unlikely, because people just do stuff and mix other people in, but it's easier to end up in that static state, when you don't get suggestions in other ways.
at least there are reblogs. but there's also no option to filter those out right in someone's profile. so it's gonna get real annoying if those are gonna be the only way for someone to push content from somebody else.