> The equivalent in any other platform is awful.

I think that's absurd. When personalization is done right you probably just don't notice it. For example, Google search makes fairly heavy use of personalization (in a great way IMO), but most people don't even remember it being added ~5-10 years ago. But, if you took it away, I think it would be starkly obvious to a lot of people.

So far the only curated list I've liked is Google Now's news feed and Quora is OK but lately the big discussions have been about simpler topics such as physical looks.