I made a brand new account, and on first login this is my feed.

Not sure if it's just this instance that has this issue, but perhaps some on-boarding?
Or a better default feed, that would appeal to "Average" people, and show some casual subs etc.

It would be nice to have the default feed be more diverse, or even better have a screen that says "Hey here are ~50 popular topics, click the ones you're interested in"

User retention might not be great if the default feed is this.

Yes, we have that but it depends on the settings the instance admin chooses and the community starter packs they set up. So it varies a lot by instance.

Try the piefed.social onboarding for the full experience as it is intended to be done.

Yeah, the initial set of communities on Piefed.zip is a bit lackluster. We don't want to impose too much on a new user but the list needs to be expanded. If all goes well tonight with the update, I'll modify it. Also, new users should get a better offer when we import more topics from other instances

That is because that is the subscribed tab (should probably be popular or all) and those are the only communities you are subscribed to.

IMO you shouldn't be subscribed to any communties by default.

Sure but then there should be some kind of onboarding, or a better default page.

New users might lose interest before finding communities they would have liked