4 ms·

I'm starting to despair of the possibility of ever having a reliable way to gauge product quality on the Internet. It seems to be a huge asymmetry problem where

I'm starting to despair of the possibility of ever having a reliable way to gauge product quality on the Internet. It seems to be a huge asymmetry problem where, as soon as a trustworthy system appears, the rewards of gaming it are so big compared to what consumers are willing to pay to have it stay trustworthy, that sellers will throw unlimited money at the problem until they have captured it with useless garbage. About the only thing you can do is find a particular writer or site that has a reputation you trust, but they might never review the specific product you're interested in. And when you're trying to buy something in an entirely new category you're not familiar with, it's hopeless.

supertrope 8y ago
Goodhart's law: A measure ceases to be useful as soon as it becomes an optimization target. Concentrated benefit and diffuse cost is how a minority can maintain a globally sub-optimal status quo.
KarenSatantsby 8y ago
go to the Fu&king store and pick it up and heaft it poke it feel it ask the dude if you can see one work read the first few pages in the book store - read a consumer reports article buy the one with the solid circles... If its a game watch a play through see if its the kind of place you like - if its a restaurant eat there once.. oh.. thats not the Internet.. sorry dude
3pt14159 8y ago
All we need is a web of trust that is easy to use and so many of these problems go away.
- supertrope 8y ago
  As in OpenPGP? Ease of use has to extend beyond software. How much do you trust your friends? Your friend's friends? People in the same city/occupation/age/social class/gender/race/citizenship? PGP has one threshold for transitive trust: three trusted keys trusting another key is good enough for your key to also trust it. In our capitalist society the easiest way for something to spread is a profit motive. Whoever spends the marketing resources to popularize it will have to recover their costs somehow. A lot of people will not pay for yet another subscription, and marketers will pay a lot to make their company look better.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  Then you run into the same issue gpg has: it is hard to get up and running.
mnm1 8y ago
This is why it's important to have a reliable return process for online shops. Unfortunately, no online store that I know of has one, least of all Amazon, so I find myself buying more and more in regular stores and generally buying less and less often simply to reduce the risk of getting stuck with a bad purchase. It's ironic that the online shopping experience now has been topped by the brick and mortar store experience without brick and mortar doing anything significant to alter their experience in decades. Online stores are simply untrustworthy and I don't see this changing soon. From Amazon actively closing accounts they don't like to them and others failing to ship products repeatedly, the experience is now worse in every single way. And I'm not a big fan of driving to stores at all.
- mchahn 8y ago
  > This is why it's important to have a reliable return process for online shops. Unfortunately, no online store that I know of has one, least of all Amazon, Huh? I have bought hundreds of items the past year for my small business and returned probably a dozen. I've never had any problem. I can even drop off the item at my local Kohl's and they package the return and ship it at no cost, even if it's my fault for the return. Edit: I'm talking about Amazon.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Woozle's paradox of epistemic systems: Because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/RCyGi3HQnL1 https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/RCyGi3HQ... https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_epistemic_systems_gain_social_and_political/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_ep...

supertrope 8y ago

Goodhart's law: A measure ceases to be useful as soon as it becomes an optimization target. Concentrated benefit and diffuse cost is how a minority can maintain a globally sub-optimal status quo.

KarenSatantsby 8y ago

go to the Fu&king store and pick it up and heaft it poke it feel it ask the dude if you can see one work read the first few pages in the book store - read a consumer reports article buy the one with the solid circles... If its a game watch a play through see if its the kind of place you like - if its a restaurant eat there once.. oh.. thats not the Internet.. sorry dude

3pt14159 8y ago

All we need is a web of trust that is easy to use and so many of these problems go away.

supertrope 8y ago
As in OpenPGP? Ease of use has to extend beyond software. How much do you trust your friends? Your friend's friends? People in the same city/occupation/age/social class/gender/race/citizenship? PGP has one threshold for transitive trust: three trusted keys trusting another key is good enough for your key to also trust it. In our capitalist society the easiest way for something to spread is a profit motive. Whoever spends the marketing resources to popularize it will have to recover their costs somehow. A lot of people will not pay for yet another subscription, and marketers will pay a lot to make their company look better.
tomjen3 8y ago
Then you run into the same issue gpg has: it is hard to get up and running.

mnm1 8y ago

This is why it's important to have a reliable return process for online shops. Unfortunately, no online store that I know of has one, least of all Amazon, so I find myself buying more and more in regular stores and generally buying less and less often simply to reduce the risk of getting stuck with a bad purchase. It's ironic that the online shopping experience now has been topped by the brick and mortar store experience without brick and mortar doing anything significant to alter their experience in decades. Online stores are simply untrustworthy and I don't see this changing soon. From Amazon actively closing accounts they don't like to them and others failing to ship products repeatedly, the experience is now worse in every single way. And I'm not a big fan of driving to stores at all.

mchahn 8y ago
> This is why it's important to have a reliable return process for online shops. Unfortunately, no online store that I know of has one, least of all Amazon, Huh? I have bought hundreds of items the past year for my small business and returned probably a dozen. I've never had any problem. I can even drop off the item at my local Kohl's and they package the return and ship it at no cost, even if it's my fault for the return. Edit: I'm talking about Amazon.

dredmorbius 8y ago

Woozle's paradox of epistemic systems: Because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/RCyGi3HQnL1 https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/RCyGi3HQ... https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_epistemic_systems_gain_social_and_political/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_ep...