Subreddit trick is super useful. Also for avoiding disinformation, which is a problem in any topic that applies to the general population, because these are thoroughly SEO-saturated by content marketing scoundrels. So usually one of the first things I do is search "<topic of interest> site:reddit.com", look for dedicated subreddits, and browse the top posts and the subreddit wiki. More often than not, there's a lot of solid community knowledge collected there.

Circling back to the topic of apps and ratings, I pretty much never use the app store for product discovery. If I install an app, it's because I knew about it from elsewhere. May be a professional reviewer, may be a friend, or may be a random poster on HN. Basically, it must be a human who I can be confident isn't trying to deceive me.