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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> or, follow me on this. i just walk out onto the street, type "restaurant" into google, and pick something with 4 star and up reviews. no marketing or presentations involved

Heh.

Reliance on numerical ratings in online reviews isn't particularly different than reliance on marketing with a specific demographic targeting and, yeah, surprisingly enough it does tend to lead you to the more instagram-ready establishments.

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right.. when someone eats at a place and gives it a number of stars rating how good it was, it tells you the same about how good it is as instagram marketing. here's the point - you go to sf, get a place around you with good reviews, and the food is overpriced, overpresented, and average in taste.

The OP literally stated a reason to live in SF is the food. That's simply false. It's not poor quality, but it's no reason to live there. It's not better than in an average city.

> right.. when someone eats at a place and gives it a number of stars rating how good it was, it tells you the same about how good it is as instagram marketing.

There are distinct demographic trends in online reviews activity that are broadly similar to those involved in instagramming meals, which makes the biases in using aggregate ratings similar to those in favoring Instagram or marketing targeting the same demographic, yes.

(You can get better information from online reviews, but it takes more than blindly following aggregate ratings.)

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