Comment by darkwater
> Before (20-30 years ago): you need to have a book (for profit, curated) or a map (for profit, less info). You needed to rely on other people or on previous experience. Hard to know what changed since the info was collected.
Counterargument: the hiking app was good 10-12 years ago when it was used by the overlap of tech enthusiasts and hiking enthusiasts, which provided good routes made by expert people (just like the books and maps before). Now you have a cacophony of tracks recorded by anyone, with lot of back and forths because they got lost as well while recording it. Oh and you need a monthly subscription to properly follow the hike!
(Yes, I know you can still find books and maps)
Not all areas had a hiking app 10 years ago. I doubt is the case even today.
And then, if you were "different" than the average preference, you had to put the effort to select the stuff good for you. Not that different to "fighting" an algorithm.
The difference might be now that more people have a "chance" to find what they want, and "before" there was just a "specific group" that was happy. I get that "the specific group" might feel "is worse" in such a case.
Regarding the quality, I hate "following the hike" (I mean people complain about "algorithms" but then following a hike is fine ...?) - I just have some markers and look each 15 minutes on the map (which also means back and forths are not an issue).
What I would love to see more often (and maybe would fit with the use-cases described here of curation) would be finding "favorite" people and getting their "content" across applications. Like, now I can't check the google maps reviews of people that I follow on strava or on Instagram or of editors of openstreetmap... Everybody does their own little walled garden (which I am fine with) but I need to find again and again the reasonable people.