What you describe is the main reason that’s stopping me from 100% leaving Reddit. There isn’t enough variety and there isn’t enough activity in communities that isn’t in the few popular ones. At the moment it feels like +80% of current users fit into a specific demographic.

I think that says more about the channels you watch and your viewing habits. I enjoy STEM and STEM related channels; I don’t experience the same as what you’ve described.

At least normal European people are locked into a platform that doesn’t care what device you’re using, unlike iMessage - so it’s not all bad

I generally have already decided what to purchase before I load Amazon’s website. I also rarely purchase cheap white label products, and so Amazon’s reviews are mostly irrelevant to me. I’ve rarely needed to return items too and recently they were all my fault anyway, eg, not quite the dimensions I thought I needed.

I’ve never heard of anyone use a shop’s reviews to decide what product to purchase, so you’re literally the first to me.

If I want a product that I have no idea about then I’ll go to forums, YouTube channels, etc about that type of thing and see what they say about it all. They’ll be people who’ve done product reviews and comparisons. And so they’re the people with the knowledge and their the people that care.

So in your example of wanting a guitar pedal I’d be visiting music and electric guitar places on the internet to gather knowledge on the product range.

Once I hit the online store, I’ve already decided what I want to purchase. And so the store reviews are more about the seller themselves and whether the product is genuine/fake, or a good/bad version of the white label item.

Fakespot has always felt inaccurate to me. Once every 6 months or so I gave it a go to see if any of the updates have improved it but it never felt like it did to me.

Furthermore, I don’t see the point in Fakespot since Amazon bends over backwards to accept returns for any reason.

The only issue with projects like LineageOS is that the camera usually sucks because the full fat camera driver isn’t released to the public, it’s only the basic driver. The camera can still take photos but all of the features you’ve become accustomed to are not there. This was my experience and what the LineageOS team said during the Samsung S5-S8 days.