I actually know people whose job it is to write these things, and to create and maintain sock puppet personas on forums for the purpose of subtly promoting clients&#x27; products and disparaging those of competitors.<p>Then there are the professional reviews, which are all conflicted because most reviewers either get to keep the gear or the gear maker is a sponsor of the site&#x2F;publication and the reviewer knows it. I say this as a person who&#x27;s still involved in publishing reviews (of outdoor gear, mostly), and who most of the time gets to keep whatever some company sends me.<p>However rotten you think the adtech industry is, the state of product reviews online -- user generated, casual forum reviews, professional reviews, etc. -- is worse.<p>I have a standard rant about the current state of the web that I give all my family and friends, and it always ends with: &quot;if you didn&#x27;t pay to read it, you probably read an advertisement.&quot;