I don't find institutions valuable in this regard as well, unless you're looking for a potential conflict of interest there.

Journals is something else, mostly because finding out if it is a "real" journal can help to sort out a lot of crap. If it's a journal where you just pay to get stuff published without any peer-review that tries to look like a real scientific journal, it's pretty safe to just stop reading.

Using the prestige or impact factor of the journal as a guide for quality is likely misguided as well. Though it is a warning sign to me if a paper makes claims that look like they should be publishable in a prestigious journal, but it actually appeared in some journal nobody knows.