Reddit and facebook offer the ability for anyone to recommend to you, with no real way to filter their actual authority on the subject except by the one post it

Reddit and facebook offer the ability for anyone to recommend to you, with no real way to filter their actual authority on the subject except by the one post itself (scowering through each person's history to get a better sense is beyond unreasonable). With a bookstore, you can reasonably expect, at least to a certain degree, an authority figure. With facebook/reddit, you can reasonably expect nonsense, and maybe one somewhat knowledged guy piping up in a wave of shit. Tbh, I have no idea why you'd bring up reddit or fb instead of at least hn, where the noise to signal ratio at least attempts to approach something useable. Reddit and facebook are where you go to accidentally stumble into something useful; not when you're searching for it. In fact, if you're looking for an expert, you usually go where few people go: because those you would find there probably have good reason to be there; places where its only worth being if you're an expert in the niche