[cartermatic]

I've been searching for a new camera to buy. Rather than reading general reviews from blogs where I don't know if they're sponsored or not through a Google search, I was searching "Fujifilm x-h2s review reddit" or "best camera under $2000 reddit" on Google instead. I've found a lot of the time, it can be hard to tell if a blog post from a Google search has actually used the product, or is just keyword spamming and hoping for a referral fee. Especially if I'm looking to buy something in an area I'm not familiar with and don't know the trusted review sites yet. Granted this can still happen on Reddit but I assume it is rarer.

I've also found that if I search for something directly on Reddit, I get all sorts of results. Some related, some tangential. And a lot of the time there's porn or NSFW content mixed in.

[badpun]

If I see a referral link in any kind of advisory/review article, I immediately assume the whole website is a low-effort, no-ethics attempt at making money, and not much else. There are very few exceptions to that rule, where it's fairly obvious that the site is doing fairly extensive testing or research and not just spamming with chatGPT-like platitutes.