The issue is largely due to a bug. The front page doesn't show new content. This isn't because there isn't new content, but because the servers aren't automatically resorting the pages.
This will be fixed in due time.
I would reccomend sorting threads by new until the next update. New seems to work as expected. Active and Hot are affected by the bug.
I would still advocate for the feature though, this was also my Reddit approach even when there was a huge amount of content. Hiding content is a nice way to manage your feed.
i agree. there was a request for this in github, but it was closed because they argue that marking as “read” is just as good. but i don’t want to hide all read posts, i like coming back to them later sometimes.