It's true that reputation and trust matter - at least they should. I guess it comes down to the question if a large enough portion of consumers actually know an

It's true that reputation and trust matter - at least they should. I guess it comes down to the question if a large enough portion of consumers actually know and care about this stuff and would be willing to reward a more open/honest approach enough to actually keep a business running. It might ultimately mean that consumers would have to reward a site/channel that doesn't actually review product X - kind of hard to make a living on that when most revenue ist ad/click based. There might be smaller outlets/youtube channels that do exactly that and use patreon or similar support channels but the bigger sites apparently don't want to bet on that. There was some sort of attempt by consumers to highlight these issues a few years ago but that was completely curbstomped by the gamergate shitshow.