This reminds me of a recent HN thread about Amazon Echo. I brought up my skepticism that the undisclosed but touted Amazon sales of Echo were really a signal th

This reminds me of a recent HN thread about Amazon Echo. I brought up my skepticism that the undisclosed but touted Amazon sales of Echo were really a signal that the device is being adopted and well-liked by the consumer market that Amazon sought to target. And, for saying anything even slightly negative about a big tech company, I of course got downvoted to oblivion by everyone adding their own anecdata. Most loudly, at least one commenter linked to the reviews on Amazon itself, some tens of thousands with a 4-ish star average, as if this was definitive proof of something. Even just casually looking through the reviews, it was easy to see that almost all of the glowing, positive reviews were ghost written, or came from "Top X reviewers" who clear have a selection bias for offering positive reviews to reinforce their status as a highly ranked Amazon reviewer, or from people who got advanced copies of the device (again, selection bias if they are the sort of people who actively seek out new tech to review), and on and on. What an echo chamber this place has become (no pun intended).