It used to be that you would do a search on a relevant subject and get blog posts, forums posts, and maybe a couple of relevant companies offering the product or service. (And if you wanted more information on said company you could give them a call and actually talk to a real person about said service) You could even trust amazon and yelp reviews. Now searches have been completely taken over by Forbes top 10 lists, random affiliate link click through aggregators that copy and paste each others work, review factories that will kill your competitors and boost your product stars, ect… It seems like the internet has gotten soooo much harder to use, just because you have to wade through all the bullshit. It’s no wonder people switch to reddit and lemmy style sites, in a way it mirrors a little what kind of information you used to be able to garner from the internet in it’s early days. What do people do these days to find genuine information about products or services?
Stick to sites you know. If you’re looking for a review and you get a hit on a site you don’t know there’s a better than 50% chance it’s just an ad generated site (and frequently these days just the output from chatgpt).
Sucks for lesser known sites that are trying to get noticed, but unless google work out a way of removing the crap from feeds that’s the way it is.
Same with youtube… unless you trust the reviewer, assume it’s paid unless there’s good evidence otherwise.
Search for reddit/lemmy mentions specifically… although those can be astroturfed too… but the comments are generally helpful.
You hit the nail on the head, mate!
In previous times, I used to follow certain sites more closely, but then life happened and I lost track of things and now several sites have closed and I don’t know where to start.
For example, I used to dig GameSpy for game reviews, but it closed down. I rarely buy games these days, but I don’t know what to read when I do and want to inform myself (I remember IGN, but I don’t know if it’s good). I can check out reviews on Steam, but they’re short reviews.
Same deal goes for PC reviews or computer accessories. I don’t know where to look: everything looks like an ad site. I remember PCmag.com but I don’t know if itself is an ad site or what to compare it to, if I wanted to check a second opinion. Every YouTube video about technology feels like a sponsored ad, though some are legit
Edit: fixed grammar
For videogames specifically, I usually turn to these sources for reliable advice:
- Eurogamer and other reputable media outlets I’ve been following for years, so I know their journalists well and their tastes
- Metacritic and GameFAQs
- Watch streamers play the game I’m interested in for a while and make up my own mind as to whether I like what I see or not
Games I tend to look for people playing it on twitch. You can’t get much better than actually seeing a game in action to know if it’s for you.
I like OpenCritic for game reviews now. It’s a site that aggregates a lot of reviews into one site. If not there I always trust steam reviews of games.
Have good filters for all the crap and use search engines with modifiers. What’s a subject or thing you’ve struggled to research so I can see if I have the same issue?
You’re asking about a pretty tough problem, and I don’t have the silver bullet for that one. However, I do have some tools that might help you out a bit. None of these tools are 100% reliable, so take everything with a grain of salt.
Fakespot and reviewmeta can help weeding out some of the junk reviews.
When I have a lot of text to go through, I just dump all of it on chatGPT or Bing and ask for a summary. It’s a language model after all, so it should be pretty good at this sort of thing. A horse won’t plow a field all by itself, but if you’re there to steer it, it will get the job done faster than you would.
When I’m looking for a good book to read, I’ll usually use the reviews of goodreads. Just skip all the 5-star reviews, because they are usually written by people who aren’t competent at reviewing books. Take all the the 1-4 star reviews dump them on your favorite LLM and let it look for frequently reoccurring complaints.
I think it’s becoming a lost art … but basically, you need to go by reputation. Pick well known sites that you trust, compare what they say about the subject, don’t even base your opinion on just one random blog article or tweet / reddit / lemmy post.
For some, Wikipedia is trustworthy since it (usually) cites its sources and has a pretty good track record, while for others it’s not to be trusted, cause anyone can edit it. In the end it’s up to you what you trust. Another example: The CDC (in the US) can be considered trustworthy for health information, being an official government agency, but many also don’t trust it as it has become more politicised and so, biased. Again, you decide what to trust, and always consult at least two trusted sources, more is better.
For product reviews, I simply don’t pay much attention to the star rating, but instead, read the actual reviews, and sort them chronologically so I read the most recent ones. Check that they are actually reviewing the product / service you think they are, as there are ways to get good reviews then “switch” the product listing (amazon) and other similar tricks. Check if it seems plausible, level-headed, or if it’s just someone being angry, or likely fake. Like I said, it’s an art, not a science. Sometimes, you have to actually buy the product / service and judge for yourself, then compare your experience with the reviews, and you’ll learn to tell the truthful reviews from the fake or unreliable.
A tip regarding Wikipedia is to check the edit history if the last edit was made very recently since it could be spam that no one spotted yet.
