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Comment by d3nj4l | Hacker News Reader

IMO, reddit is the last remaining place to find genuine, user opinions on products. I've taken to adding "reddit" to all my google searches when I'm researching which product to buy; for example, I typed "DT 770 reddit headphones" in google when I was looking up which headphones to buy. Reviewers rave about that pair, but looking up real user experiences of them made me decide they weren't for me. Over time even that's becoming less useful, as memes overtake the platform and you can't find people talking about more niche products, but that's still the most useful any social network has been for me.

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For me, reddit's use is both the case for product reviews and finding collections of good beginner-intermediate level information for some hobbies.

The sidebar wikis of hobbyist communities is packed full of good content, curated over years by the community so usually it's a very good "starter pack" knowledge to save time on your own research.

I know a few people who make good livings faking those, I'd take a lot of the conversations you see there with a grain of salt.

Try to find advice on buying a hot tub. 99% of posts are hot tub dealers.

Dealers have crowded a lot of the markets, yeah. VPNs are another one, if you look for VPN advice you're very likely to find people trying to get you to use their referral code or lying about things.

I just replied to another comment saying i do exactly the same and how the rest of the internet is mad up of copy-pasted (many times faked) reviews and auto-generated content (or auto translations) which is just infuriating.

The thing is, at some point this is probably gonna happen to reddit as well, so enjoy it while it lasts. Just the other day i read in a subreddit about people being offered things in return for favorable reviews on certain products on those subreddits. Sigh.

It's the r/juststart amazon affiliate way. I'll be really happy when Amazon finally cuts commissions to zero. There's just so much unbelievably poor content on google results.

Reddit is utterly useless for honest product reviews. The only place to reliably find genuine product reviews is from people you know IRL. Your friends, family, coworkers, etc.

It's getting worse over time but you can generally find good, honest reviews. If you're doubtful about the authenticity you can usually just ask them a question about something specific and you can judge it from their response (or lack thereof)

Agreed, reddit is a goldmine for anecdata.

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