It's impossible to get accurate information about travel, hotels, locations. Results are often filled with listicle crap that each copy each other and contain outdated pop content.
I've become so used to suffixing these queries with "forum" or "reddit" to get articles written by real humans.
A funny thing is that the spammers are adapting to this. I found a bunch of websites that all had "reddit" in the title a while back, because that is something people add to filter out the spam.
Companies are adapting to this too - marketers are increasingly purchasing or grooming high-rep accounts for astroturfing select subreddits related to company products
There's been a influx of "memes" that just say things like "when you buy new sunglasses from x.com" and it's just a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio making a face. My own friends repost these things on social media because they are "funny". Not only do people not see problem, they literally see ads as worthy of being reshared.
Yes, companies on Reddit have learned to use memes to promote their product organically on that site. And if a meme is particularly good, soon you have unaffiliated users happily parroting it, just like that "Hotel? T***" which I've seen mentioned so many times on that site from random users.
Or just have a memelord managing your Twitter, and soon your latest funny post will find its place all over the internet. I have never eaten at Wendy's in my life nor stepped on US soil once, yet I have seen their "memes" dozens of times.
They don't, honestly this stuff goes to the top and its been this way for a long long time. Any niche interest subreddit that has gear or products has a sidebar with some stuff that's ordained by the moderation team to be "The best X for Y" and therefore incessantly recommended in the comments and all over the subreddit. Sometimes you will even see metathreads where the users are complaining about the recommendations listed in the subreddit's official wiki or faq page.
It's both, I think. If the goal is to find high quality items survivor bias can definitely interfere with the results. The items must survive long enough to count as something you can use "for life" and it's possible, even likely, that they only survived due to low use or extraordinary care.
At reddit they decided that you should not have to option to restrict your search to a specific subreddit anymore. Why they did that? It's a terrible idea!
I had no idea others have begun resorting to this as well these days. My assumption was that I had just somehow gotten worse/impatient at researching things or that reddit was just a more reliable source these days. Thinking back, may search quality has just gotten wrose.
Seems like we need a search engine for trusted sites, something like MetaCrawler that searches more specialized search engines. There are some sites I trust for travel information. There are other sites I trust for reviews of consumer products and others for movies.
I've made a custom search in Chrome with the "r" hotkey, that searches Reddit in the past year. Sites are also starting to just fake the dates so I'm getting really old results on regular. This takes care of both:
One useful feature I use before visiting new places is sorting Google Maps reviews and photos by date. I've found Google Maps comments more accurate than TripAdvisor or Airbnb.
The problem with that is it redirects you to the Reddit search page, which isn't great. It's much better for me to use "site:reddit.com [query]" on DDG than to use the !r.
Reddit is a great place to get recommended the most expensive stuff. 99% of the time the best sellers on Amazon work great for me, but if I look at Reddit they insist only a couple very expensive brands are worth owning in any category of item. It's crazy and sometimes I even fall for it. Can't tell if it's marketing or if people very into their hobbies become obsessed with tiny differences.
I find that's true in specialised subs, but not wider ones. Like, if you're looking for a good coffee grinder, r/coffee will only recommend the top-end stuff, but if you search in something r/AskReddit you get more 'approachable' results.
They are correct for coffee grinders though, it's almost pointless to cheap out of them, you negate all the benefits of grinding it yourself when you buy a subpar non-burr grinder that doesn't produce a consistent grain size.
Buying a blade grinder is like buying a hammer with a spongy face.
Buying a blade grinder is a waste of money, but burr grinders range from $50 to $500 and while there is a significant quality difference, it can be reasonable to buy one at the cheaper end.
You can do OK with a blade grinder. I used to have one from Target, and I would grind in two or three stages, stirring the grounds with my finger (!) in between to get more consistent grinds.
A blade grinder is fundamentally incapable of producing remotely uniform particle sizes unless you're willing to sift the result and discard a substantial portion of the coffee. Stale pre-ground coffee will usually give better results and is typically the same price as beans.
I disagree. The most common recommendation is the $150 Baratza Encore, which is about correct for price/performance on the low end. The manufacturer sells cheap replacement parts for it, which is a massive convenience. They also sell cheaper refurbished grinders occasionally. I've had mine for 5-6 years and expect it to last much longer. Better electric grinders start at hundreds of dollars more (in the U.S. market).
This just means your "one of them" I've used a $30 delonghi for 10+ years. Its fine, people consistently complement the coffee, only someone in the <1% of coffee drinkers needs a $150 grinder. Like most people are ok with brown water from a Keurig. Someone who wants a beginner recommendation absolutely doesn't need something that's $150.
Even appending “reddit” is often inadequate, as the algorithm seems to artificially limit one search result item (potentially with some children under it, but unrelated threads, 2-3 more items) per host. So it becomes necessary to use “site:www.reddit.com” to get more than a few non-sucky results.
I've become so used to suffixing these queries with "forum" or "reddit" to get articles written by real humans.