Another factor that isn't being fully accounted for is a new SEO/marketing technique where many people are asking scripted questions publicly on sites like reddit and then stealthily providing answers that market a product or service. This leads to reddit results not being exactly authentic as well. Pretty much most online reviews cannot be trusted as we are begged to do positive reviews of companies (and when companies outright purchase positive reviews, which is also very rampant) also as a factor.
Though Google is at fault for letting their service falter to the "payola" race, many other factors are in play all across the Internet since data quality has faltered almost totally. For major-cost and non-refundable purchases I need to trust, I go to brick and mortar stores and inspect what I am buying. I am thankful not everything has shifted to an online-only model. It's going to be a very bumpy ride on the Internet until Congress and consumer protection laws wake TF up and do their job.
Is Google unique in that, though? Amazon reviews are worthless now because companies pay customers to leave positive reviews or pay review farms to leave positive reviews. Even if someone reports them to Amazon, though, the companies just close their accounts and open new ones with different names and sell the same product. It's so trivial for them to pivot when they get caught that I'm not sure there is a solution to this problem.
There is a perfectly good solution, and some people use it: don't buy from unknown vendors. If you buy a product from one of a few well-known companies in that space, they have a big investment in their brand, and are much less likely to engage in behaviors that might diminish the value of that brand.
The price is that you pay more -- effectively, you are paying for that branding.
I've had so many bad experiences on Amazon that I am increasingly doing just that. It doesn't apply to everything, but it is a useful strategy.
So how does that apply to the conversation around Google, though? We can't only ingest information from a small group of sources. That's antithetical to the entire concept of the internet.
Not really because the content is coming from a variety of users who are creating the content on the site. Reddit itself is not creating the content in the same way that sellers are trying to sell you their products and Google is trying to serve you their ads.
Reddit does have astroturfing, but a lot of communities are aggressive about identifying and banning shills, so it's not as widespread as in google search results.
A ton of reddit communities are run by shills themselves. That's why users outright get downvoted and banned when they even are posting potentially winning content. We cannot act like everything is totally normal these days on Reddit. They're hemorrhaging users fast.
Just look up posts about people getting banned from reddit on Twitter or on black hat forums. There are tons of people complaining about it.
The thing about users getting entirely banned from a platform is that they aren't able to complain anywhere near to the forum about unfairness. It's all done in stealth.
Platform algorithms now often do a lot to keep dissent about platforms themselves and partner companies out of sight. It's pretty crazy how companies that publicly advocate equality and fairness serve to undermine speech when it's about their business.
There are such posts about each and every platform out there. In addition to not knowing what's the ban frequency, there's also no info in those complaints if they got banned for a good reason.
Last winter people got fed up with antivax-dewormer-nomasker bullshit and a lot of subreddits just took the trash out, so those complaints you saw might just be be those dumbasses.
I'm not saying there aren't annoying powertripping mods on Reddit, e.g. r/Linux, but there always tends to be an alternative subreddit one can use.
Though Google is at fault for letting their service falter to the "payola" race, many other factors are in play all across the Internet since data quality has faltered almost totally. For major-cost and non-refundable purchases I need to trust, I go to brick and mortar stores and inspect what I am buying. I am thankful not everything has shifted to an online-only model. It's going to be a very bumpy ride on the Internet until Congress and consumer protection laws wake TF up and do their job.