Without some level of recommendation engine wouldn't you need to pre-emptively know the blogs you want to follow already in which case what is the point of the site. What you are saying applies to a social network like facebook but could never work for blogs or youtube where you actually want to be exposed to new and interesting content.

Lost me as in I’m not interested personally in this as a user.

You know what sufficiently works for serving up new and interesting content? This site. And the community drives this, not “recommendation engines”.

And if there was a real problem to be solved here, there are plenty of people who would try to monetize it and automate it.

I guess my central point is that OP wants to go into typical Red Sea territory.