>I think eventually we will pine for the old way. Already you can’t get useful reviews anymore because all of the “comparison” searches are run by manufacturer mouthpieces.

Absolutely. A lot of reviews these days from google results read like someone who has only ever read the feature list from the marketing page. There is a bit of a search engine hack where you just put "reddit" after any search and it brings up fairly real results for now.

I find reviews useful anyway. I simply ignore the "good" reviews and always look at the worst ones. There are three kinds of bad reviews - people who had random bad stuff happen (postal service broke it) that is irrelevant and think everyone should know - people with some sort of vendetta (possibly disgruntled employees, or competitors, or crazy customers) - and finally, people who actually had a bad experience that might be characteristic of the product's quality or design.

If the third category can be used to construct a narrative about something that is a deal-breaker, then that's the information I'm looking for. Of course, it has to be taken in context of the competitors.

My expectation is that the best products have some type (I) and type (II) bad reviews, but no type (III). Almost as good is something with type (III) that are about something that either doesn't matter to me or is actually a positive from my perspective.

I'm pretty good at finding decent reviews. I'd never post my process on a public forum, but I apparently don't have as much trouble avoiding sponcon as a lot of others.

If people are doing that, it’s fairly certain that there are marketers maintaining “humanoid” Reddit accounts which then chime in with opinions on Bluetooth headphones.

No doubt. So far the only defense against crap products is buying them from a physical store so you can test and easily return them and having a good warranty.