When did you leave?
Asking because we do have filtering mechanisms; it's just not enough for some stackers but we will continue to work on it.
For example, we released "greeter mode" in Sep 2022 [0] which is off by default. This means you won't see any free items by (new) users unless you enable greeter mode.
And a week before that, we released "wild west mode" [1]. This works similar to greeter mode but acts on items that other stackers downzapped. This is also off by default. So if you want to make up your mind about stuff yourself, you can enable it and downzaps of other stackers will not have an effect on your feed.
And just a few days ago, we released muting territories [2] which works similar to muting users [3]. This means you can now filter your feed not only by muting users but by muting whole territories, too.
So maybe you didn't know all of that and you might want to give SN a try again?
Feedback is also always welcome!
[0] https://stacker.news/items/74511
[1] https://stacker.news/items/72602
[2] https://stacker.news/items/372672
[3] https://stacker.news/items/269467