I tried searching for an active thread about this ages-old topic and found it locked. I am grateful for the service Itch.io provides to developers, but the game results algorithm's monotonous promotion of horror games, even for otherwise-unrelated tags (like "simulation"), is really bad.
I just want to browse a variety of games without needing to exclude anything. Why must a default page be a wall of horror games? Why can't you get away from them without excluding them? Why can't horror fans search for games with a tag, instead? Then everyone would win; it's less work for them than for the rest of us. You have the tech to hide NSFW games; why not hide horror games unless a user wants them? Horror games are not all-ages- or all-audiences-appropriate either. Then, users who are looking for something non-specific besides a NSFW game, horror game, or visual novel could simply exclude VNs.
Obviously, I'm hardly alone in being frustrated with this poor outcome of Itch.io's algorithm and relationship with other social media. The saturation is truly extraordinary. Is there really no interest in doing anything about it? So many tiles of wacky/creepy faces in the results pages are like turbocharged YouTube thumbnails. Horror games are an irritant; I don't think there would be quite the same complaints if Itch.io's results were dominated by regular 2D pixel art platformers, instead.
The subgenre of "horror game pretending to be something innocent" makes the game results that much worse.
(NOTE: Please keep it civil so that this dialogue can remain open.)