>You could post under different topics so people could read my programming or local posts without having to cope with my religious or political posts (just examples, I never got around to the two last ones I think).

I don't think that would work thesedays. If you had a political post, I'd say you'd correctly keep it in its correct circle (based on you highlighting the feature here), but since Google+ was a thing, a new generation of twitter addicts have the mantra of "everything is political, even looking at a keyboard is a political act, politics affects everything you do, even if you just sit there, so that's why my political rant is in your model train collector circle #sorrynotsorry"

So they'd abuse the circles feature with that mantra as an excuse.

Then you unfollow them.

Which is fine. But my point wasn't so much in search of a solution, rather the fact that circles in itself likely wouldn't be a solution with the impact for which it was designed.

Google got it nearly right, but it was still the creator who had to choose the circle to post it in.

I want a social network where I can choose to follow people and some tags - want to be able to follow you, when you are not talking about politics and remain 100% ignorant of any posts you make about politics.