Reviews, Maslow, and Mediums
1 | Online reviews are irrelevant and word of mouth is more important than ever
Online reviews are great.
When you can trust them.
Unfortunately, too many of them appear to be fake or questionable.
Sites don't have strong incentives to remove fake reviews. The activity shows engagement. Positive reviews incentivize customers to purchase the products and services.
Direct-to-Consumer brands curate their reviews to show "Over 2,000 five star reviews!" but don't show the 3,000 one stars.
Google Maps reviews are pumped up with businesses incentivizing their employees to ask customers for positive reviews.
Amazon is the most egregious, with as much as 42% of reviews being fake. The companies listing the products have strategies to give away items, offer discounts, or directly buy reviews.
There are services dedicated to identifying these fraudulent ones, like FakeSpot was, but they aren't comprehensive or well-known enough to make a meaningful difference.
Generative AI makes them even more difficult to spot. Our trust in online review systems will continue to erode, much like our trust in media with the rise of "fake news."
So who can we trust now?
The people we always have: family and friends. Word of mouth recommendations.
It is now more important than ever to have people you believe have good taste, and it is likely to stay that way.
2 | Storytelling will be the key differentiator in business
Globalization is a beautiful thing.
Building things is easy now. Knowledge is free, tools are accessible, supplies are everywhere.
It might not feel like it, but the barriers to entry for modern business are lower than they've ever been.
And AI is making it easier. AI will automate all the things.
You can clearly see it in software.
And pairing AI with robotics, we are at the beginning of a hardware revolution. Like software, the marginal cost of manufacturing will practically drop to zero.
In the future, the difficult part of business won't be back office operations or manufacturing.
The key differentiator in business will be your ability to tell a story.
Greg Peters (GP), co-CEO of Netflix, recently spoke about this with Ben Thompson (BT) in context of Netflix and content:
BT: What are the advantages of professional content versus user-generated content? And are any of those advantages structural and sustainable in the long run as the capability of producing very high quality content gets better and better?
GP: No, I think they are sustainable, and here’s the theory behind it. Professional becomes a little bit of a subjective term, but maybe let’s just say that where storytelling and the capability, or let’s say the skill at storytelling at the highest level in the human population, I think of that as a fairly rare commodity. Not everyone can do that storytelling, and the ability to do that and do that consistently essentially is where we’re thinking about that demarcation. Our model allows us to compete more effectively for those world-class storytellers.
...
BT: Is AI slop going to save you? If it overwhelms the UGC [User-generated content] platforms and basically it’s like you’re a refuge, so this is all actual, real.
GP: I think it’s a credible — I don’t know if that’s the reality so I can’t say with certainty that’s where we’re going to land, but it’s a credible possibility, I think.
We already see so much AI slop on Instagram and TikTok.
We already see so many junk products on Amazon and Temu.
We already seek refuge through individual "creators."
We already seek out word of mouth recommendations for products.
This will be the same for businesses at large, if it isn't already.
The marginal cost of business creation and operation will continue to decrease.
The importance of engaging with customers through storytelling will be the difference between what businesses do well and which ones excel. Look at your local bowling alley, then look at Yianni Mavrakis.
Your ability to connect and relate will be the primary differentiator as we climb up Maslow's hierarchy of capitalism.
It doesn't mean it's a bad thing.
It just means it will be different.
3 | What do you call a psychic little person who escaped from jail?
thought starters.
#1
- https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1ksxj6i/mozilla_fakespot_shutting_down_on_july_1/
- https://www.consumerreports.org/money/customer-reviews-ratings/how-to-spot-fake-online-reviews-a1345282053/
#2
- https://stratechery.com/2026/an-interview-with-netflix-ceo-greg-peters-about-engagement-and-warner-bros/
- https://www.youtube.com/shorts/99SnOKPuKo0
- https://www.instagram.com/yohnmav/