The fact that it was previously restricted to only monied interests means that it was relatively rare in the past. Yes, there were the magazines and floating 'reviewers' who everyone learned were shills for whatever company was paying them for a good review, but the bulk of the reviews were earnestly trying to live up to consumer expectations for such reviews. Once things became more 'democratic' and cheaper we saw the review version of Gresham's Law at work -- fraudulent reviews flooded out sincere ones and the system has mostly because useless for its intended purpose, it is now just another marketing channel.

It's the problem. We need a spam filter for reviews. Let's create a startup and fake it growth with fake reviews. «Fake it, until you make it.»

"It's it necessarily good or bad. just more open, democratic, cheaper"

Thats not like a sensible rule of thumb. If we 'democratise' landmines, it would be clearly bad. This is similar

I get what you mean, but honestly, fake reviews != landmines.

The system is broken and everyone needs to cheat to participate. That’s bad - not some amoral democratized system