Show HN: WeSearch – Anonymous news aggregator with no algorithm, 700 sources

Blindspots, "only the left is covering this" has a lot of UK news since you mark The Guardian as being left-leaning (while the guardian in UK/Europe would be considered rather centrist).

I'm gonna give some first time use feedback/thoughts stream of consciousness. It's gonna be brutal so take it or leave it.

The pop-up modals are very annoying and persistent. A long tutorial before using a news aggregator, really? I have to read a FAQ? Ok, close that and see what it is first. Oh no, another pop-up.

Why ask me if I want to install it if I haven't even gotten to try it yet, really jumping the gun.

Interface is good, great concept. The anonymous commenting seems nice.

The link to read today's stories makes me think that that's the only way to get to the stories, but when i click it it just scrolls me down 50 pixels. Thanks I guess.

The story feed sometimes takes a while to load and looks kinda blank.

I scroll down see about 5 stories and all of a sudden I'm on summaries about the most commented and viewed stories. Where's my doom scrolling, lol.

Again, I'm being overly harsh but I think these things are barriers to first time users.

My experience is that usually users don't give me good feedback and they kinda just keep it in.

Not a fan of the serif trend in recent years in general, but within your UX it makes content hard to read. I understand the appeal in chasing the premium look for taglines, company name, headers, but a blanket application of it works towards an anti-premium aesthetic, IMO.

Hitting the back button results in the WeSearch modal appearing every time on FF. Makes an otherwise snappy website feel slow.

I'd say venture away from social media functionality. I personally struggle to see a news site with emoji reacts as a serious vendor. The "Hot" label also feels a lot like tiktok's opaque "heating" technique of nudging things to virality. Knowing that this platform is new and seeing the "hot" label suggests an early reddit approach at faking it until you make it. The point: the more I look, the more I go "huh" instead of "cool!"

Finally, in this era of state sponsored disinformation campaigns like the Doppelganger campaign, I personally struggle to trust a platform who's owners/organization are not known, and I say that knowing that part of your product is the anonymous commenting. There is a vibe-codey aesthetic at play here that in combination with the former, I can't engage with the site beyond a short period of cautious observation.

Best of luck to you

I don't see the value clearly expressed. Why this product is better then BBC/Ground News/ Feedly/ X / Reddit/ Google news.