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this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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Personally, while I don't mind being advertised to when I'm specifically looking for something, marketing materials aren't particularly useful about informing me whether something will be a good purchase. Marketing is pretty much just a big conflict of interest, where unethical ones will sometimes just outright lie about their product, and even the ethical ones will usually try to avoid talking about the negatives.
Review sites can be ok, but marketers game those, too, so it's hard to tell if a review is genuine or not (though the ones who aren't as good at it don't hide that their descriptions are basically just marketing copy).
Currently, I seek out negative customer reviews. Those can also be gamed, but attention mostly gets put towards the positive ones, so if the negative reviews are mostly about the delivery going badly, stuff that I don't care about, or very over the top about how horrible the product is, they can often be dismissed.
I think that the market is primed for a store that curates their products and is willing to tell shitty manufacturers to fuck off instead of taking kickbacks or ignoring bad products because they get a cut either way. A store whose goal isn't to just sell you something but to do everything they can to ensure you won't buy something you won't like.
I think technical information has gotten a lot worse for all kinds of products.
Just look up any smartphone how long do you have to scroll and what submenu do you have to click to get very basic specs.
I recently searched for a good air quality sensor. Which WiFi standard does it support? Does it have batteries? What connector does it have? Do I need a shitty app to setup the WiFi information? Does it have a local API? What buttons does it have?
Technical infos are often impossible to find. You have to buy it to try it out and return it when it doesn't do what you need. Infuriating.