I guess. Successful executions become so endemic you have to take a step back and recognize it.

Hn is a discovery/recommendation site as is Reddit. Amazon makes a lot of margin on theirs and arguable it's part of the major value add for Spotify and Netflix.

Almost everybody looks at food and accommodation reviews and people bring up IMDb and rotten tomatoes when considering whether to watch a movie.

Search engines and llms make decisions on what to surface, those are a kind of recommendation as well.

So although I understand the sentiment, it's not really a great example - there's plenty of successful executions beyond the dreaded "for you recommendations" engagement bait slop on social media feeds. You're using the successful executions dozens of times a day without noticing it.

> Hn is a discovery/recommendation site as is Reddit. Amazon makes a lot of margin on theirs and arguable it's part of the major value add for Spotify and Netflix.

Nope, HN is just an online forum. I can't tailor what I see on HN to my tastes, and there's a subset of posters who get preferential treatment on the frontpage (YC companies), so nope, HN is not a recommendation site.