Star-based reviews basically need to go away. There just isn’t any reasonable way to process the information contained in the rating itself. I know that I alw

Star-based reviews basically need to go away. There just isn’t any reasonable way to process the information contained in the rating itself. I know that I always think twice about a purchase when there are mediocre reviews, despite knowing all the ways that the reviews could be basically outright lies, because I know I don’t plan to spend all the time it would require to actually discern real from fake. I was thinking about how even simplified systems like thumbs-up/thumbs-down for music don’t make sense either. In my car, there is a great way that they could infer what I like: how long is it playing? I essentially will let at least half a song keep playing if I like it, whereas I will quickly flip away from one I don’t want. I am more likely to flip to the next song than click a thumbs-down, especially while driving. “Time actually played”, perhaps as a percentage of total song length, would probably be a great way to automatically rank my music for me. And I think it would work for Amazon and other systems too. For example, if a product was purchased and never returned, maybe it doesn’t suck. If it’s a consumable item that was purchased again, maybe it doesn’t suck. We don’t need reviews and star ratings to figure this kind of thing out, and it’s extremely hard to fake.