I still do think reviews are the best way to get aggregated feedback on established (companies, products, restaurants etc).
In order to normalize reviews for myself, I try go through them and sort by least and quickly skim a few reviews to see if it was something that was very personal/one-off to the affected person or more systematic and then it gives me a better picture. Obviously, no perfect way but would love to hear if/how others take review feedback into consideration.
The whole issues of reviews and ratings remains a pretty big issue across all platforms. Some of these shortfalls may be unsolvable, like predicting a high consequence, low probability future action, like being murdered by your Uber driver.
A larger issue is platforms enabling the reviewed parties to game their reviews, e.g. Yelp, Glassdoor, and employee corruption. This is preventable.
In order to normalize reviews for myself, I try go through them and sort by least and quickly skim a few reviews to see if it was something that was very personal/one-off to the affected person or more systematic and then it gives me a better picture. Obviously, no perfect way but would love to hear if/how others take review feedback into consideration.