3 ms·

Good riddance. Reviews are just other people telling you how to live your life. Beyond it being subjective to the reviewer, there's really no upside in engaging

by butlike 3mo ago

Good riddance. Reviews are just other people telling you how to live your life. Beyond it being subjective to the reviewer, there's really no upside in engaging with reviews. If it's a bad review, now you feel bad about having wanted to engage with something with abysmal scores (think: liking a movie then finding out it has a 32% on rotten tomatoes), or if it's a good review, it's useless because you were already going to engage with the thing being reviewed. You chose the restaurant for a reason, right? It sounded good. We should get back to having our own experiences regardless of what the consensus says. If it looks good _to you_, it might just be good _for you_.

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breezybottom 3mo ago
Apartment reviews are pretty fucking important when you're committing to live somewhere for at least a year. I don't want to find out that my complex is infested with roaches.
goda90 3mo ago
Maybe this would be ok with good consumer protection laws, but in some places honest reviews are the best hope you have of not wasting money on products that might fail some way or another.
- disgruntledphd2 3mo ago
  Which (in the UK and Ireland) solve this for me. As I pay them every month and they don't take stuff from the companies, our interests are aligned. I know have actually good white goods for the same money I paid for crap ones.
Zak 3mo ago
What? Why would you feel bad about a negative review of something you didn't create? Either the product is something I was curious about and hadn't decided to spend time and money on yet, in which case a negative review might save me the trouble, or it's something I've already done and formed my own opinion about, in which case I'm probably not reading reviews.
sgarman 3mo ago
Reading a review from Roger Ebert provided a lot of value to me - I knew generally his likes and dislikes and could use that information relationship to contextualize the review. I think reviews break down when you move from individual to aggregates. What does 34% really mean, maybe 90/100 reviewers hate horror, are under 25, all from a specific city? I really don't agree with your take that on reviews but I do think reviews in aggregate - where there is no relationship to the reviewer -- are problematic.
- wyclif 3mo ago
  The reason why Roger Ebert or Gene Siskel's reviews had value is because they were real people with carefully considered and sometimes strongly-held opinions. That's never going to be true of the algo.

by butlike 3mo ago

deleted 3mo ago

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breezybottom 3mo ago

Apartment reviews are pretty fucking important when you're committing to live somewhere for at least a year. I don't want to find out that my complex is infested with roaches.

goda90 3mo ago

Maybe this would be ok with good consumer protection laws, but in some places honest reviews are the best hope you have of not wasting money on products that might fail some way or another.

disgruntledphd2 3mo ago
Which (in the UK and Ireland) solve this for me. As I pay them every month and they don't take stuff from the companies, our interests are aligned. I know have actually good white goods for the same money I paid for crap ones.

Zak 3mo ago

What? Why would you feel bad about a negative review of something you didn't create? Either the product is something I was curious about and hadn't decided to spend time and money on yet, in which case a negative review might save me the trouble, or it's something I've already done and formed my own opinion about, in which case I'm probably not reading reviews.

sgarman 3mo ago

Reading a review from Roger Ebert provided a lot of value to me - I knew generally his likes and dislikes and could use that information relationship to contextualize the review. I think reviews break down when you move from individual to aggregates. What does 34% really mean, maybe 90/100 reviewers hate horror, are under 25, all from a specific city? I really don't agree with your take that on reviews but I do think reviews in aggregate - where there is no relationship to the reviewer -- are problematic.

wyclif 3mo ago
The reason why Roger Ebert or Gene Siskel's reviews had value is because they were real people with carefully considered and sometimes strongly-held opinions. That's never going to be true of the algo.