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Fantastic -- if super-distressing -- article by Gisele Navarro about the horrible state of product reviews online
The tl;dr is that Google seems to overweight reviews from longstanding big journalism brands ...
... but many of those brands, like Popular Science, were long ago bought up by private equity or conglomerates, then hollowed out ...
... so they now produce crappy articles that are *probably* lying about their "test labs" to please Google
https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/
Read it! So good
@clive there really are no honest reviews anymore. Between Google ads and AI written reviews I'm usually persuaded into buying a brand and discover later.
They have gotten very good at looking legitimate. I think Amazon must be paying for some of them.
It’s really turning into a situation where you almost have to go with trusted word of mouth of friends and family now
@clive I knew online "reviews" were bad. I didn't know they were THAT bad! Fascinating article that explains how "big brand" websites are actively pushing total garbage, overpriced products that they've never actually tested - while not even mentioning better-value products that actually work 
@clive
Stopped trusting any review years ago. Ask a friend works the best. YouTube is another dummy trap.
@clive that's been pretty obvious for a while. It takes a fair amount of scrutiny to figure out which reviews are utile and which ones equine dung.
Google is really setting itself up for disruption, but I don't know if it will be a single vendor or just a disintegration into smaller enclaves in typical SV de/consolidating cyclical fashion.
Yep, good question – whether the replacement will be one single unitary search engine or just a lot of different smaller domain-specific gambits
@clive isn't it crazy? The section wondering if Wirecutter would still be big now is debatable (I think it would still be big without ny times).
In the end I trust full video reviews now.
A full video review does suggest someone actually used the thing, indeed
@clive this video convinced me to get a smoker tube
https://youtu.be/-a-IdTn6Ud0?si=cHSEHJQF_4WTD6sE
@clive Not surprising but also incredibly depressing.
Alas, yes
@clive Sciam was always garbage though...
#ConsumerReports sill exists, y'all. It's still the gold standard of product review.
And for tech products beyond CR's ambit, I guess I'd use sites that have been around a while and have not (SFAIK) been hollowed out: #Wired, #CNet, etc.
Yep Wired still has on-staff reviewers actually trying gear out
@clive I’ve noticed this many times. So many sites just produce listicles with affiliate links for every major option as a “best choice” for some
Obscure use case.
Best mattress for catholic side sleepers with maple allergies: acorn bed
And no evidence they actually tested anything themselves
@clive the part about Molekule is hilarious. A few years back when I was between jobs, I started writing stuff that's now being written by AI, for pennies, and one of the articles they assigned to me was a review of a Molekule air filter. Obviously I never laid hands on it
Yep yep
It seems pretty clear Molekule was probably paying for coverage all over the place
@clive super in depth. It definitely validates my feelings about the growing difficulty searching I’ve had over recent years.
@clive would love to find more independent review sites.
Me too!
This article is a clear example of why No Agenda doesn’t take advertising, albeit in another medium; especially towards the end of the article referencing CNet.