[function_seven]

My solution to this has been to find a subreddit that's devoted to the product in question.

If there is one, then I'll check the sidebar there, read through some posts, search for a few keywords. Basically spend 15 minutes researching.

Reddit still has shills and astroturfs, but for a lot of niches they're often aggressively moderated out of the community.

To go along with your umbrella example:

Unfortunately /r/umbrellas isn't a thing, but I did find this thread[1]. Sprinkled throughout the comments are links to sites that seem to be on the up-and-up.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/a4afrg/guys_d...

[Ecolog]

Reddit is so useful in that regard. So many niches with honest and detailed reviews that I usually don't buy something online without checking a relevant subreddit first.

[Razengan]

That statement itself seems like astroturfing.

How can one be sure those subreddits don't have any paid posters?

When you have a popular post that reaches the Reddit front page, you may receive messages from people asking if you'd like to promote their products.

[Unklejoe]

> How can one be sure those subreddits don't have any paid posters?

My guess is that they eventually will (and I'm sure some already do). However, one thing that kind of helps weed out the fake reviews is the fact that you can inspect a user's post history.

[Paul-ish]

You can see a reviewers review history on Amazon.

[function_seven]

Yeah, but that's just reviews.

On reddit or other more general sites, you can see their entire comment history. Hopefully you'll notice that a tiny tiny portion of their comments are related to products or reviews.

In other words, you can get a feel for if the person is genuine or not.

Of course, that doesn't 100% rule out paid shilling by (otherwise) honest people, but you do get a much better sense of the veracity of reviews on a site like reddit than you could ever get from Amazon.

[JustSomeNobody]

You can't be sure of anything. All you can do is use multiple sources and aggregate the data.

[asatterfield54]

This worked great for a while, but in the last few years reddit has become corporately dominated, regardless of moderation attempts (admins have removed moderators of certain subreddits to accomplish this, would guess based on the spend).

[dspillett]

> but in the last few years reddit has become corporately dominated

This is always the way: once something has a large enough audience it will become a target for exploitation. This is why ad networks are juicy targets for hacks (wide spread of potential victims) and popular sites, or specific areas on those sites, like reddit can quickly become overrun by shills.

[elteto]

This is what I do as well. I append the word “reddit” at the end of all my google product searches if I want to get an honest, high quality review.

[crankylinuxuser]

The other thing I do, in the hardware realm, is to see what open source and hacker efforts have been done.

If the thing is open and understood, then I will have a much better time. If not, it will probably soon go on the abandoned trash heap.

[skunkworker]

An example, for flashlights: https://www.reddit.com/r/flashlight/

[TeMPOraL]

Seconded. I do the same. I also do this whenever I have to explore a new domain of interest, to quickly find my bearings and some high-quality sources to continue with.

This works especially well if the domain is not niche, but has wide general-population applicability. Say, dieting. The amount of content-marketing bullshit on the general Internet makes general topical searches near useless. Whereas just browsing the collected knowledge (pinned posts, wikis) of various dieting subreddits let me quickly find one appropriate regime for me, and then its specific subreddit taught me how to apply it safely.

(Yes, it was /r/keto, and yes, it worked.)

[potatofarmer45]

This is a good idea. I'll do it from now on