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Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

Not all are swayed.

The hard thing is finding which ones are, and which ones aren't.

I rely on a web of trust. When I see another new hot AI trend, I check it against whether any of the people I've followed via RSS or manually curated on Twitter, Mastodon, etc (many of whom I met IRL) have said anything about it.

There's still a an undercurrent of people blogging and posting and chatting who are trustworthy and haven't sold their soul to marketing. Or at least are clear when they say things that are marketing.

But it is ever harder to find those voices, especially if you're new to an industry.

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It's hard to express, but it seems the best way to sus-out who is a shill and who's authentic is by comparing across reviews for a product.

It's almost a bit like AI speak. The shills will all have very similar sounding content. They'll all hit on the same (ad copy) points. They might mix in a few negative tidbits, but generally speaking you'll catch them all praising the same wizbang features.

Mkbhd is my favorite baseline shill. He practically just reads the product sheet. You know if he says it, it was probably given to him by the person paying for the review and, indeed, you can find the points he brings up echoed in other people's reviews.

On the flip side, I generally trust Gamers Nexus to not shill. Primarily because their lack of playing ball has actually hurt their access.

I've enjoyed your videos as well. They don't come off as a shill particularly because there's a number of products where the negative points you've put out have been strong enough to actually discourage a purchase. They haven't been weak "The colors could pop more".

> It's hard to express, but it seems the best way to sus-out who is a shill and who's authentic is by comparing across reviews for a product.

Brandolini’s law strikes again: you really have to pay attention to catch a shill. 99% of the time when you’re not paying attention and intentionally shopping for a particular product is when they get you.

Yeah, really does not help that the internet seems to be built from the ground up to reward shilling.

Click on a shill video in youtube and you'll have 20 identical videos on the same topic.

But also, advertisers are smart and you have to assume they know you are on the lookout for a shill. I have to assume the why shilling works will continue to evolve as the way to detect shilling evolves.

I expect we'll end up with something like this in the future [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gArU-BAO7Kw

I, too, rely on your web of trust, please don't ever break my heart Jeff!

It makes sense they'd be harder to find, I imagine there are more opportunities to make money by selling your soul than by offering honest review, and people with large investments have large incentives to dilute signal in their favor.

It's sad that so many platforms let it happen, but it makes sense when the users aren't the ones paying the bills. I'm immensely grateful for those that resist though, and if I were a religious person I would nominate them for sainthood or reincarnation or at least a plaque on a nice park bench somewhere.

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