My initial decision making process before buying a book went something like this:

Is the premise interesting to me?
Sample a bit—does it draw me in?
If yes, then pick it up.

Alternatively, someone would suggest a book for me and I would also pick it up with no questions asked.

Then along came user reviews on Amazon… then Goodreads… book bloggers… social media… each review affirming or doubting a decision to buy.

Authors doubled down on getting as many reviews as possible because people paid attention. They knew it was now part of their audience’s decision making process.

This extended to other products, sites and businesses.

While this may seem like a good thing, it presents a serious problem: many reviews are fake.

It’s ridiculously simple to incentivize people to leave five-star reviews and even easier to get them to leave one-star ones.

Even with the “real” ones, if you read carefully, it’s quite clear whether it’s a legitimate praise or unwarranted criticism (many one-star reviews on the App Store for Apple are people complaining they have to pay for a product). Right now, it’s at the point where my starting point is skepticism about any of them.

It’s just another way to game the system where algorithms reward input with attention.

The only thing that really seems to work is what has worked since the beginning of time: word-of-mouth.

Legitimate people having conversations and making unsolicited recommendations or cautionary tales. Oh, and actually having an experience with the product/service/business itself.

Anything outside of that can promptly be ignored.