Online reviews have become one of the dankest cesspits of misinformation and deceit on the entire internet. Amazon's reviews are so thoroughly gamed as to be functionally useless and Amazon knows this and tacitly supports it through their inaction. Yelp and Google Places review are being gamed en-masse by bad actors and scammers and have become so distorted that by relying upon them you're now more likely have a bad experience than a good one. Review websites are stuffed full of advertorials and universally have such super shady advertising / sponsorship policies it's functionally impossible to know whether the review you're reading was paid for or not, and all the big tech sites are so dependent on advertising revenue, they almost never post critical review for fear of upsetting their advertisers. It's a unspoken rule in the industry these days that negative reviews are simply not published. Not to mention damn near every single product review video on YouTube, IG Reels, Tiktok, or wherever else now is either straight up sponsored content where the "Reviewer" is receiving monetary compensation for their so called "Review" or at minimum is receiving the product for free, which creates yet another perverse incentive, as anyone who posts a negative review will simply stop getting free products to review in the future.

There are literally dozens of 100+ person companies in China and India who's entire business model is faking online reviews.

The entire industry is broken, and the average consumer can't find literally a single source for unbiased, trust-worthy reviews of anything anymore, which I for one believe is the system working exactly as designed and intended. Never forget the rich will sacrifice literally anything that's generally considered to be part of the "Public good" if it means they'll get rich faster, which is exactly what's happening here.