Damn, that first paragraph hits way to close to home for me. Now you've got me feeling extra anxious. You are very correct though, I'm sure there are many more that feel this way too.
I'm a fan of FOSS like everyone else on Lemmy, but I don't think it's a universal solution for everything. Some things are worth paying for and I value an efficient search experience and privacy (Kagi has no personal info on me. I pay with a crypto wallet through a third party) so Kagi is a worthwhile service for me.
I agree with you though, any good search should be good enough to dig up the opinions and bias that is out there somewhere that agrees with your own biases.
I do a bit of both. For awhile I was relying just on algorithms but switching to primarily active management the past few years has really been invigorating. Renewed my excitement for music. When I do use algorithms to discover some new stuff it's being fed mostly from my own curationnwhich is so much better of getting stuck in a loop where the algorithm recommends something, you select some favorites and then it recommends off those. This starts to really dull and homogonize your library after awhile.
Just a standard American SUV