Amazon used to have a reviewing system that was a lot more social: you could follow people, chat with them on message boards, read detailed bios and an explanat

Amazon used to have a reviewing system that was a lot more social: you could follow people, chat with them on message boards, read detailed bios and an explanation of why they review a certain niche of products, etc. Then, it was easy to notice trustworthy reviewers who were reviewing things for the simple pleasure of it. (Back in the day, it was mainly books, CDs, and DVDs being reviewed, not Chinese-made products like now.) Amazon eventually shut down the message boards, probably because it felt moderation cost more than the feature brought profit. Successive changes to the site's design obscured most of the other social aspects.