Are reviews on the internet still genuine?

Reviews these days can be bought. At least once in three weeks I get a call or a message from someone who's offering me a part time work from home job that involves liking posts and posting reviews.

Even if you think that only a handful actually take up the job, look at the reviews yourself and see how many of them appear to be real.

There are higher tails in today's reviews and the median review is not a 3 start. By this I mean there are more 1 stars and more 5 stars than anything in the middle. 1 start if there something you dislike and 5 star if there's something you really really love. I'd say that that likely chance of you giving a 1 star is higher than you giving a 5 star. This then skews the distribution towards the 1 star which is somewhat offset by paid reviews or known reviews of 5 stars. In some cases, people really like the place, but its rare for them to take out time to give out reviews.

I've now gone back to word of mouth recommendations and using more of AI to decide if something is worth it.