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Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests

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  1. PyWoody · · focus · HN ↗
    I gave up on any product related reviews on Reddit a decade ago. It can still be useful for guides that may describe what type of products you should look into, e.g., woodworking tools, skincare, etc.

    For product reviews, I&#x27;ve been using GearLab (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techgearlab.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techgearlab.com&#x2F;) for years with pretty reliable results. I have no affiliation with them.

    1. fourside · · focus · HN ↗
      I wasn’t aware of GearLab, thanks for the tip. I will say, though I took a look and it seems like they heavily use Amazon links so they suffer from similar downsides as Wirecutter.

      Amazon nowadays is such a crapshoot. A link to a product isn’t reliable. The price could be different than what the review stated, and the link might be for an listing that shows as out of stock. I think GearLab tries to fix this by giving you a link to search results on Amazon instead, but in some ways that’s worse. In the couple of links I tried the reviewed product wasn’t the top result so now it’s up to you to decide which of the links is the real one.

      That loses some of the value prop for me because part of what I want from a service like this is to give me a link to a legit product listing. That’s not GearLab’s fault, Amazon makes that very difficult, but it still reduces the utility for me. That said it’s better than nothing which just points to the sad state of affairs in e-commerce today.

      Edit: it looks like at least some of their links take you directly to the product page. Not sure why some of them take you to a search results page instead, but my guess is it’s an issue with expiring links.

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