To be fair I start to have the same doubts as you, I noticed a lot of recommendations for Brothers printers, seemingly out of nowhere recently.

Might be due to a couple of bad HP printers hitting the frontpage of HN recently, and people genuinely being happy with their Brothers, but it pulled my suspicion trigger as well

The truly sad part is your reaction is perfectly normal critical thinking for the age we live in. We are bombarded with lies constantly and as such I've decided I'd rather be a cynic than a perpetual victim.

Age of information, indeed. I guess I just naively assumed it'd be correct information.