> has bought ineffective products like eye cream based on five-star reviews, including some that appeared fake. Now she only looks at two-, three- and four-star reviews when she shops on Amazon.

My strategy has always been to read the 1-star and 2-star reviews, most recent first, unless there are so few total (e.g. under a dozen) that I may as well just read them all.

Positive reviews, even 4-star and (enough of the) 3-star tend to be useless to me. What I want to know is why people hated the product. If it's exclusively for reasons that don't apply to me or for risks/problems inherent to the type of product, then I have what I need.

Negative reviews are often also where the best referals to alternative products can be. Of course, those have a high enough likelihood of being posted by a shill that one can't assume it's actually better without reading those reviews, too, but it can beat grinding through all of Amazon's search results.

All that said, the worsening counterfeit and delivery situation means I've bought hardly anything in the past year, after a progressive decline in buying the year before.