I feel like the crowd-sourcing / SEOing / optimization of reviews on the internet has, for all its benefits, made everything too noisy and untrustworthy. I know myself and a lot of other people first search reddit now instead of google because it's impossible to get anything written by a real nonbiased human otherwise.
For similar reasons I've used things like Yelp less and less and tried to use professionally editorialized reviews (Eater, The Infatuation, Bon Appetit, etc) for food, well-known travel sites/bloggers for hotels, etc. There's still some paid incentives there too obviously but I can at least calibrate it to how much I align with the publication.
Same thing happened with me @ Apple last year. Went through 4 or so interviews with the expectation that it was a remote role. Then the day before the big remote "onsite" I was told they actually wanted someone in-person. So I removed myself from the process. I'll chalk it up to 2021 being a confusing time for everyone - but I felt pretty burned by it.
For similar reasons I've used things like Yelp less and less and tried to use professionally editorialized reviews (Eater, The Infatuation, Bon Appetit, etc) for food, well-known travel sites/bloggers for hotels, etc. There's still some paid incentives there too obviously but I can at least calibrate it to how much I align with the publication.