Websites or services that act as personalized recommendation middle-men with a less "trashy" presentation for the recommendations themselves are a great idea. Essentially, I'd like "Rate Your Music" for all sorts of things. There's a reason why a handful few are trying to get those "Action Button" Youtube videos submitted to Letterboxd.
I guess I also believe that plenty of platforms with user-generated content have boundless stuff to see, and making the platforms themselves responsible for recommendations gives them almost too much responsibility. I understand it's part of the business plan, but recommendations would become less toxic of a phenomenon if they weren't forced onto your regular user experience as you engaged with the platform.. and better if they were more individual and something you'd have to access separately. Like movie reviews in the paper!
> Websites or services that act as personalized recommendation middle-men
These are impossible without a legal precedent to make adversarial interoperability legal again. While it was never explicitly made illegal, copyright law and the CFAA have successfully been used to curtail it.
Software that wraps common services such as YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/etc and added its own features on top (such as custom recommendations, etc) is routinely attacked and taken down. That's why there are no mainstream alternative clients for any of those services.
I guess I also believe that plenty of platforms with user-generated content have boundless stuff to see, and making the platforms themselves responsible for recommendations gives them almost too much responsibility. I understand it's part of the business plan, but recommendations would become less toxic of a phenomenon if they weren't forced onto your regular user experience as you engaged with the platform.. and better if they were more individual and something you'd have to access separately. Like movie reviews in the paper!