I haven’t dived into the source code yet, but while it does seem to weight newness more than e.g. Reddit, it still feels much less than 95% and it’s all based on the same principle that upvotes should also determine a bit of what you see. Keep in mind hotness is different from top, an option that Bluesky also has. (I also haven’t been able to find which option Bluesky previously defaulted to.)