I would argue that aggregate rating have always been (approximately) meaningless, and it's silly to assume they would ever carry a lot of signal. This is just a

I would argue that aggregate rating have always been (approximately) meaningless, and it's silly to assume they would ever carry a lot of signal. This is just an instance of Goodheart's Law[1] at work. Most of the financial incentives in these systems are aligned against sincere ratings - and this even applies to the companies building the rating systems. Uber doesn't want to kick off bad drivers, it reduces the supply of labor they can tap into. Airbnb doesn't want low-rated hosts, it reduces their revenue if fewer people stay there. There are long-term consequences, of course, traditional Taxis and Hotels never went away and still pose a competitive threat. But secondary effects like loss of trust in a platform take a long time to play out. [1] "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"