Whenever I explore content on different platforms (Hacker News via Algolia, X, Discord, etc.), I always check if the source supports search operators. If it does, I use them to filter out noise and discover interesting or relevant content tailored to my preferences. For platforms without built-in search functionality, I rely on Google’s search operators to surface the content I’m looking for, as long as it’s accessible on the web.

Its dead now but i one time (by hand) build an opml with feeds from pressreleases from the fortune 500. It seemed stupid but turns out no one is looking to crank out shitty pressreleases just for attention. Something has to be noteworthy to the company which turns out to be boring less than 90% of the time. At the very least 99% talks about something that was very expensive.

Do you mean browse, search, and read? "Consume content" sounds like training an LLM or loading a database.

Besides HN I look at a couple of news site, AL Daily, subscribe to some newsletters, follow links, watch YouTube. No social media or Reddit.

Unlikely you miss out on much of real importance.

Yeah, you put it better than I did - I'm not secretly raining an LLM lol.

I'm not really interested in changing my information diet to help me follow the news, but I feel like I'm missing out on the high-quality and original writing that I'm sure must exist _somewhere_ in much larger quantities than I can find through my current sources, and that there must be a way to easily aggregate them all so that I don't miss out on the sources that publish less frequently.

Just search engines, traditional journalism, and hacker news.

I am not looking for content until I have something I am specifically looking for, typically to answer a programming or Linux question.

Hacker News or lobste.rs is my primary site for new content. But I've added blogs I've found particularly well written or informative to my feed reader (currently commafeed, formerly freshrss).

If you're looking for a way to browse the "independent" web there are a few projects out there like Kagi Small Web which curate sites for you. https://blog.kagi.com/small-web

google news feed, this website, wikipedia mainly. I stay away from social media, it's toxic (though the argument could be made that any news forum that permits comments is technically "social" media).

banner checking to a large degree.

e.g.

https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/masscan