Okkaaayyy, I can see why this might seem like a good idea to you. But I don't see how it's in anyone's interests, including your own, for you to talk about it.

Okkaaayyy, I can see why this might seem like a good idea to you. But I don't see how it's in anyone's interests, including your own, for you to talk about it. If this becomes widely practised, you've killed the source of trust you were exploiting - and if this becomes widely practised it makes it more difficult for users to find out about things that are worthwhile. Now you might say something to the effect of: "Oh what's the harm? I'm just getting the word out." However, take the reviews strategy for instance: Your reviews probably aren't going to be honest in-depth analyses of the faults and benefits of a particular piece of software. There's such a strong incentive there for you to lie that I know, even ahead of you saying yes or no, that your word won't count as strong enough evidence for me to believe you don't. (My perception of the average person's truthfulness just isn't high enough to withstand that sort of incentive.) If you give someone a bad review, what are the chances they're going to give you a good one? What's your percentage in the truth? So, you win in the short-term, as long as this is kept small. But my trust for the network you're using is going to approach 0 fairly quickly if this becomes practised on any significant scale. Tragedy of the commons, basically. The easiest solution to that is just to quarantine my brain from the lot of you and treat all similar coms from similar sources as noise.