How do people find good information on the internet these days?

catch22@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 664 points –

It used to be that you would do a search on a relevant subject and get blog posts, forums posts, and maybe a couple of relevant companies offering the product or service. (And if you wanted more information on said company you could give them a call and actually talk to a real person about said service) You could even trust amazon and yelp reviews. Now searches have been completely taken over by Forbes top 10 lists, random affiliate link click through aggregators that copy and paste each others work, review factories that will kill your competitors and boost your product stars, ect.... It seems like the internet has gotten soooo much harder to use, just because you have to wade through all the bullshit. It's no wonder people switch to reddit and lemmy style sites, in a way it mirrors a little what kind of information you used to be able to garner from the internet in it's early days. What do people do these days to find genuine information about products or services?

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You hit the nail on the head, mate!

In previous times, I used to follow certain sites more closely, but then life happened and I lost track of things and now several sites have closed and I don't know where to start.

For example, I used to dig GameSpy for game reviews, but it closed down. I rarely buy games these days, but I don't know what to read when I do and want to inform myself (I remember IGN, but I don't know if it's good). I can check out reviews on Steam, but they're short reviews.

Same deal goes for PC reviews or computer accessories. I don't know where to look: everything looks like an ad site. I remember PCmag.com but I don't know if itself is an ad site or what to compare it to, if I wanted to check a second opinion. Every YouTube video about technology feels like a sponsored ad, though some are legit

Edit: fixed grammar

For videogames specifically, I usually turn to these sources for reliable advice:

  • Eurogamer and other reputable media outlets I've been following for years, so I know their journalists well and their tastes
  • Metacritic and GameFAQs
  • Watch streamers play the game I'm interested in for a while and make up my own mind as to whether I like what I see or not

Games I tend to look for people playing it on twitch. You can't get much better than actually seeing a game in action to know if it's for you.

Thanks! Sorry for the late answer! I am still resisting watching Twitch for lack of time, but if that's a good source, I'll go for it!