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Unfortunately they're not safe either. Competitors in a niche will hire sock puppet accounts to negative review each other.

This is why I always look at the two star reviews :) One star reviews are too often indeed sockpuppetery, PEBKAC and such.

If you want to actually be clever then the only option is to sample all of the information available.

Limiting oneself to a subset of information is not how one makes an informed decision.

Reading every possible review of a product I'm considering sounds far less clever than a simple heuristic to me.

Pay attention to my words. I said to sample all of the data.

I didn't say anything about reading every possible review. But you do need a good, rounded sample.

All of the available information includes information about which information is safe to ignore.

Which is why I said you're supposed to sample all of the available data.

Do you not think they would have caught on to this?

Too much effort. So no, I don't think so.

It's not too much effort to pay someone a third-world salary to do whatever you want.

Yes but wanting that is way too much effort and writing a credible two star review is actually not easy.