What's the alternative? Of course recommendations from friends are the best, but professional software reviews in the news media are 100% more reliable than anonymous crowdsourced App Store reviews, which are easily faked or purchased, and even when they aren't fake, they're often totally ignorant.
I find it very sad that there are fewer software reviews in the news media now than there used to be. This makes it much more difficult for developers to get discovered.
Which part do you distrust exactly? If a software review has screenshots and describes features of an app, do you think that's all just... invented out of thin air?
I asked what part do you distrust exactly. "The...press" seems very hand-wavey and non-specific. When the argument starts with the premise that nothing the press says can ever be trusted, that's the route to denial of all facts and creation of your own reality. Did the stock market go up or down yesterday? Who can really say... because you can't trust the press!
> Anyway, I feel you're feeling some negative emotion here that's really just people interested in the security and privacy of their machine.
I'm very interested in security and privacy. In fact, StopTheMadness is designed to help protect your privacy. I use other 3rd party software to protect my privacy too, such as Little Snitch on the Mac (which incidentally is closed source, but the developers have earned their trust). I just think there's a distinction between prudence and paranoia, and I think it's counterproductive to fall into the latter, almost shooting oneself in the foot out of fear.
