The Gossip desktop client has a different approach. It will connect to relays for you based on which relays the people you're following post to, in order to grab just their notes.

This way the user only needs to configure which relays they want their own posts to be written to, which doesn't need to be that numerous.

Global feeds might be impacted by this, but I'm not sure people are using it as much with the recent influx of new users. It's too busy.