Surprisingly (to me at least) that is the feature that resonates the most with non-technical users. A lot of people use Google just as a navigational tool to go to a website they know about. This saves them a step for some highly popular websites, but your point is still well taken.
Maybe offer a card: "Do you want to visit Facebook?" would suit the best of both worlds. Or, if you must, a 10-second auto redirect.
Anything but going straight to FB.
Observing my dad using his iPad, he regularly types sites without the TLD with his only intention being to get over to facebook.com
And I think that's the crux of the confusion here. HN users are on the more technical side and it seems you've covered some of the technical search terms well.
I think it would help to pick a target demographic and focus on that. For Google that's non-technical or low-technical users, which leaves many others scratching their heads as more advanced search features start disappearing and junk content ranks higher and higher every year. I don't think it's possible to please all demographics simultaneously.
Could make a subdirectory, subdomain, or even different domain e.g. runnaroo.tech that allows you to keep the user-friendly defaults on runnaroo.com, and more technical users could go to an alt location with a different set of defaults, and perhaps more features exposed by default.
Similar to having a mobile, lite, or no-js version of a site.