I think this is truer and truer. Part of the issue is our built-in bias towards thinking of other Reddit users (and HN and whoever) as people just like ourselv

I think this is truer and truer. Part of the issue is our built-in bias towards thinking of other Reddit users (and HN and whoever) as people just like ourselves. That means we give undue weight to their recommendations. I definitely find myself being more swayed by a single user's recommendation with maybe a few dozen upvotes, over SEO-gamed websites and Amazon reviews. But in reality, that's a ludicrous assumption, since advertisers knows it too, and it only takes 5-10 fake accounts to create that kind of pretend consensus. In many ways, Reddit is far easier to spam.