I've thought about it a lot and I really thinking having these sorts of "interest" or "friend" groups are the way to go. A major problem with major search engin

I've thought about it a lot and I really thinking having these sorts of "interest" or "friend" groups are the way to go. A major problem with major search engines like Google is they're really trying to do it all in one. We can keep a generalized utility search as the default, but I wish I could somehow tell a search engine "show me stuff you'd show to my friends from this community". I.e. what would HackerNews' community search group look like? What would this friendgroup that for some reason includes a lot of people who work in botany but that isn't the defining feature of the group. Maybe they all also happen to like board games, are allergic to social media, and are weirdly well-read on continental philosophic traditions. I think the key is that people have exit. My main gripe with things like TikTok and twitter is the algorithm tries to optimize results for what you'd like most. But people don't really work that way. People grow over time. People join different communities, put on different hats, try different identities. Sometimes it happens over time or sometimes people are in phases of their life where they're constantly in between multiple communities. I would feel more comfortable with the "profile" these algorithms made for me if I had some sort of say in it and could switch between at will or do an "incognito"/fresh slate mode whenever I want