It's hard to trust reviews when it's engineered the way it is. You're almost forced to leave a good review or else you'll get a bad review in return. People also don't like feeling guilty and transactions have been made personal. People do the same damn thing with ridesharing, really bad drivers somehow get 5 star ratings.
The way it is actually engineered is that it is impossible to view a review, before leaving your own (or waiting until the review shows up, after which you can not leave a retaliatory review).
For the ridesharing, it depends. Maybe the driver has a route they know well, or has friendly connect. Maybe traffic for you was very bad and chaotic and there was no click.
For ridesharing I played tit-for-tat for a while, until I realized that I don't want to play this game (if my rating drops below a point where less drivers will pick me up, I will switch to Taxi's). For AirBnB: I never leave bad or lukewarm reviews, only good reviews. Getting a host that is actually there for check-in, really acts a host, is getting increasingly rare, so my good reviews are too.
As mentioned by the other responses, you are mistaken. Reviews can't be seen until both parties have submit their reviews or the review period expires.
However, as a host I've encountered situations where I probably should have given a lower rating but opted to not submit a review because the guest seemed nice other than some minor poor behavior (had to ask them to be quiet during quiet hours, ignored our house rules, left more mess than usual, etc). I didn't want to affect the guests' ratings because they weren't awful and had otherwise positive reviews, so maybe it was a one-off... I am sure there is some inflation on the guest reviews as well.
I like Uber's give compliments feature. There could be a variety of reasons why they were great. Professional and just let me be. Had an awesome conversation with them and learned something. Got some good tips in a new city.
I don't feel obligated to leave a lengthy review, just either the default options and potentially a nice note.
Every time I've used Airbnb, the review process would prevent one party from seeing the other party's review until either the review period ended OR all parties would have posted a review.
In other words, you can't retaliate because of the other party's review: you don't get to see it until you post your own review.
