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submitted 2 months ago by li10@feddit.uk to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[-] sakodak@lemmy.world 177 points 2 months ago

When you Google for "best whatever" and land on a reddit thread, take some time to look at the histories of the people commenting.

You'll find many cases where the only post they've ever made was for that product, and cases where the person posting the question also posts in the comments with an answer, like they forgot to switch to alt accounts.

A lot of it is obvious SEO marketing nonsense. Trust nothing. The entire Internet is trying to scam you. Enshittification, indeed. This used to be a nice neighborhood before the capitalists moved in in the 90s.

[-] Landless2029@lemmy.world 25 points 2 months ago

And it's only going to get WAY WORSE with LLM and Gen AI...

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 months ago

Good suggestion.

I think the savviest of the savvy out there are both properly seeding comment histories and continuing to post other comments after they astroturf which makes it all but impossible to identify.

Big bummer and no perfect solution I’ve ever heard of but we do what we can and can always hope.

[-] Robust_Mirror@aussie.zone 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The perfect solution is to research which to buy for 9 months and then end up buying none.

[-] qooqie@lemmy.world 117 points 2 months ago

Because Reddit is infested with bot accounts at this point I tend to trust older threads over newer ones. Easy as hell to buy accs to say a competitor sucks dick

[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 73 points 2 months ago

Or it's just late stage capitalism where the product has truly gone to shit.

[-] horse_battery_staple@lemmy.world 44 points 2 months ago

Por que no los dos?

[-] DarkDarkHouse 17 points 2 months ago

Inb4 reddit removes dates from posts/comments

[-] franklin@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Can we all just take a moment and be thankful that Lemmy exists? Because if it didn't, I don't know what I'd do.

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago

Being miserable on reddit instead of being [insert feeling here] on lemmy?

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[-] Num10ck@lemmy.world 89 points 2 months ago

there needs to be a crowd sourced product review and maintenance website that can see trends of enshittification.

[-] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 43 points 2 months ago

From Wikishittia, the free enshittepedia

[-] turnipjs@lemmy.ml 14 points 2 months ago

(it does not exist, sadly)

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[-] parody@lemmings.world 26 points 2 months ago

Let’s say everyone used an identity verification service to signup, like had to send photos of their ID and their SSN (national identity number) to be vetted by a third party.

How long after the service got popular would it take for the most aggressive marketers to pay rings of fraudsters to lend their identities and/or make fake reviews?

I think it would definitely start out great until it got big enough to be super useful and then the fraud would ramp up. I think an organization like Consumer Reports has a chance at successfully maintaining a low-bias product database, but the paywall is a big obstacle, as is the fact they’ll only review the largest product catalogs.

[-] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 months ago

These are the pitfalls with the "amazon reviews/yelp" model.

A decent implementation of the Wikipedia/FOSS model sidesteps this because it theoretically is run by opinionated curators. No amount of bots/shills can break the article soft-lock ounce foul play is spotted.

That's not to say these systems haven't been occasionally broken through more sophisticated attacks, but empirically it seems clear that the model generally works well enough given enough community engagement (which would be the biggest challenge IMO, because maintainers can't be expected to buy every product, and reliable primary sources may be hard to come by).

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[-] voluble@lemmy.ca 49 points 2 months ago

This is the sort of thing that the old internet could really deliver on. Chances are, a search query could lead you to some guy's hoodie blog, and he just liked hoodies, and posted honestly about them.

Now, it's all a mess of SEO pumped affiliate link lists filled with crapware. If the query is even thinkable, there will be AI generated pages stuffed with sponsored links, ready and waiting for you. And with search engines preferring recent results, that's the type of page you'll be served.

I've had decent luck using marginalia search to seek out some of those old internet type results. Obscurity works as a barrier to corporate infiltration. Plus you get page results that don't have a million tracking and analytics scripts running on them, which is refreshing.

[-] recklessengagement@lemmy.world 43 points 2 months ago

My exact experience finding out Audacity has adware

[-] RayJW@sh.itjust.works 22 points 2 months ago

That's why Tenacity is here to save the day!

[-] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 30 points 2 months ago

After all of the controversies, Tenacity was born. It first started as temporary-audacity on GitHub since it didn’t have a name. In order to decide a new name for the project, the lead maintainer at the time held a vote. Among the new names were “Audacium”, “Sneedacity”, and “Tenacity”. The name Sneedacity would later gain traction among 4chan members, resulting in a large volume of votes for the name Sneedacity.

In response to the large volume of votes by 4chan members, the previous maintainers had an emergency vote, choosing the name Tenacity instead of Sneedacity. This upset some, leading to the creation of a new fork with virtually the same intentions. Unsurpringly, this fork was named Sneedacity.

Sneedacity lmao

[-] JASN_DE@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

Did they learn nothing from the Boaty McBoatface disaster?

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[-] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

Reading your comment is how I found out. That makes me sad.

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[-] Asafum@feddit.nl 39 points 2 months ago

I spent 3 hours reading Amazon reviews for shoes just trying to find ONE fucking pair that didn't have "falls apart in 3-6 months" as the most common review...

The state of everything is just absurd.

[-] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago

We've always had to pay for quality, buying crap on Amazon is always going to be a tossup. There's plenty of stores out there where you can buy good stuff, you just have to be willing to pay more than slave wages for it.

It's tough out there, but there's plenty of quality stuff if you look in the right place.

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[-] Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

Part of that is just selection bias. Very few people would post Amazon reviews for their shoes unprompted. But if something unexpected happens, like if they have a defective pair, they're quite a bit more likely to go back and write something.

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[-] Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz 32 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This is where guitars are right now.

Both Fender and Gibson are now owned by venture capitalists. Their quality of everything, from strings to picks to guitars, has plummeted across every brand they own in the last five years. It’s sad really.

You go on Reddit and people talk about the models and which one is great for this, or why they prefer it for that, but then you find some deeper dives into more recent spaces and people who know what they are talking about have moved away entirely from both brands.

If anyone is curious, you can buy a better guitar from Harley-Benton, Cort, or Jet than from Fender/Gibson and it will be 1/2 to 1/4 the cost.

[-] MouseKeyboard@ttrpg.network 28 points 2 months ago

The classic "Buy a reputable brand, cut costs and coast along on the reputation until you can sell off all your shares and move on to another company". Bonus points for using ~~legalised embezzlement~~ share buyback.

[-] bstix@feddit.dk 9 points 2 months ago

I saw a headline on some guitar magazine "These are the most over priced guitars currently". Says a lot and it's true.

There's not much point in throwing money at a brand name anymore. Quality control is long gone and they all come straight out of a factory anyway. It's alright though, because factory quality is decent, and with a little know-how you can easily make them play good.

My best guitar is a $100 kit-build. Acknowledging that I'd need to do a full setup on any guitar I figured I might as well paint and assemble it myself, because I'm not going to pay several hundreds just for a paint job and a logo.

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[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 20 points 2 months ago

Everyone replies with 'thanks', 'nailed it'. 'Holy shit that's perfect'

To a comment that's [deleted]

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[-] AnAverageSnoot@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

When I started fishing as a hobby, I couldn't believe that it was the only hobby I've ever taken up that pretty much had unanimous recommendations for beginners. Everyone seemed to suggest the Ugly Stik GX2 on every website or forum. And there were no threads about how I should buy a more expensive rod/reel, other than a few that mentioned that I might want to upgrade the reel on the GX2 after a year or so.

Even the salesperson at the Bass Pro Shops store recommended the GX2 even though I could have afforded a bit more.

It was a completely new experience for me. I am used to having to spend at least $300-400 on initial investments for new hobbies. Fishing was only CAD$120 for everything!

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[-] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 14 points 2 months ago

Just get a cheap one in KMart. It’ll likely fall apart, but it still comes from the same sweatshop as your favourite brand and you didn’t pay so much for the months of wear you got.

[-] Gingernate@programming.dev 16 points 2 months ago

KMart?! What is this, 1995?

[-] gallopingsnail 15 points 2 months ago

They're still kicking in Australia

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[-] Anti_Face_Weapon@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

For something like a hoodie, I recommend you go to a thrift store. Anything you find there will be durable and quality enough to survive, and you can feel it or try it on. It's very easy to find high quality stuff while thrifting. 8 dollars for what might cost 80 new.

Try to focus on non-synthetic fibers or semi synthetic. Plastics in clothing are bad for the environment.

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[-] w3dd1e@lemm.ee 11 points 2 months ago

You buy it anyway, and it’s a great purchase. Very happy. Dog eats it a few days later and the product is discontinued. Or Is it just me?

[-] Gumbyyy@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

I ran into this when I was thinking about buying some Doc Martens recently. I know there have been other examples, that's just the most recent I can remember.

[-] Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 months ago

depending on reddit for any kind of real world advice is a crapshoot at best

[-] ag_roberston_author@beehaw.org 12 points 2 months ago

Even a crapshoot is better than the straight advertisements on Google.

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[-] Skoobie@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 months ago

Every FOSS project I've ever looked into lol

[-] Freefall@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Gerber Legend 800 Multitool

The one I got from a PX the year after it was released is epic. Have carried it for 23 years. It has seen everything and outside of scraping the knife sharpish again, has never been maintained. I misplaced it for a bit (under friends driver's seat for about a year) and couldn't find a replacement "upgrade". Did the Leatherman wave2 for a bit. Couldn't take it, hit up eBay, got 3 more Gerber L800s (later release, still in boxes)...so bad. They just felt cheaper. When we stumbled upon my old Gerber, I kept the new ones for parts. Replace my knife with a new one...it already has rust dots on it. My old one after decades of abuse and being sharpened to half it's starting width, doesn't have a spot of rust on it.

ANYWAY....yeah...what OP said.

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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
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