The fact that I only get comments and upvotes when I promote my post suggests no one really looks at their newsfeeds, most people just go to the Hot or Trending tabs.

Nah

I ALWAYS go through my feed (I follow less than 70 users and I intend to prune soon)

It's just that our interests don't collide much. I'm an art person, stories, poems, ET AL

Some of us still take our feeds seriously