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> but what sort of things are y'all searching for where reddit's opinion is relevant If you want real, unvarnished reviews and opinions of products, you need
by Alupis 4y ago
> but what sort of things are y'all searching for where reddit's opinion is relevant
If you want real, unvarnished reviews and opinions of products, you need to get it from real people that have owned the product for more than 1 day before leaving the review.
I recently needed to purchase a new winter coat. Surfing many reddit threads across a dozen or so subs actually convinced me to not purchase the coat I had in mind. It looked nice and all, but real users that had owned it for a while had disappointing things to say about the zippers failing prematurely.
That's not something you would find in Amazon reviews, which are mostly people who recently purchased the item and have not owned it long enough to experience failures.
- mrguyorama 4y agoWhy do you assume the posts on reddit are at all organic? Big brands 100% astroturf on reddit.
- Alupis 4y agoIf you read the conversation threads, you can pretty easily pick out astroturfing. Plus, do your own research of course. I don't exclusively use reddit for this sort of research... if I'm looking for outdoor gear I will browse outdoor gear forums for people's thoughts. Cycling, same thing... etc. You look for a consensus to be formed before making your own opinion. My point was default google search results are now unreliable because they are almost always affiliate links.
- thfuran 4y ago>If you read the conversation threads, you can pretty easily pick out astroturfing. How do you know that?
- Alupis 4y agoWe're humans, not computers. We don't have the same problem of discerning intent like AI would. It's pretty obvious when someone is communicating nothing but positive things about a product, or nothing but negative things about another competing product. Sometimes it's more subtle... but seriously, if you read enough comments you will locate the ones that are obviously shilling or astroturfing. They won't talk about many topics (or no other topic) except the item or company they're promoting. It's really hard to make a bot or corporate account appear, sound and feel like a genuine human writing about their experiences. Particularly on a platform like reddit where people speak rather freely about products and ruthlessly call out astroturfing accounts. With all that said - perhaps some people have better BS detectors than others. I like to think mine is rather accurate most of the time.
- thfuran 4y ago>We don't have the same problem of discerning intent like AI would. The same problems? No. But humans pretty notoriously don't always communicate effectively. >It's pretty obvious when someone is communicating nothing but positive things about a product, or nothing but negative things about another competing product. Sometimes it's more subtle... but seriously, if you read enough comments you will locate the ones that are obviously shilling or astroturfing. Yeah, you'll notice the ones that are obvious, but that doesn't really tell you much about your overall accuracy, since you don't know how many non-obvious ones you're missing.
- Alupis 4y agoI don't know what you're driving at. Is it perfect? Of course not... what alternative do you suggest?
- kitsunesoba 4y agoYeah, reddit is a lot better for gauging what owning a product is like long-term. Don't blindly trust naturally, but it can be a decent data source in what would otherwise be a total vacuum.