This may be true. But that doesn't mean the best strategy is to completely burn your reputation. Even if the only way to profit is to sell-out, it's usually better to sell-out slowly and collect much more sustainable revenue over a longer time frame.

There are a lot of equilibria where most free review sites are mostly, but not completely, trustworthy. With enough review sites in that model, an end-user can effectively triangulate the objective truth with arbitrarily high certainty.

Man, that is bleak. Insightful and probably true, but really depressing to think about.