The Problem With Online Ratings
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-problem-with-online-ratings-2/
In an information cascade, you have to make a decision (buy a product, eat at a restaurant, etc.), and you can observe the choices of other people who made the same decision in order to influence your own choice. When we first learned about information cascades, I noticed that it was a topic that is very applicable to real-life. The article discusses how in modern day, we are completely swamped with information regarding other people’s opinions (specifically related to consumer-based products). For example, deciding if a video on YouTube is worth watching based on its like/dislike ratio (something I’ve done quite a lot) or checking how many stars a particular restaurant is rated on Yelp to decide if it’s a place worth eating at.
The article goes on further and discusses how other people’s decisions pressure us to change our own. For example, you might rate a movie only 6/10 online, but if many other people are rating the movie 8 or 9 out of 10 you might feel pressured to increase your rating to a 7 because so many other people loved the movie. The potential negative effects of this are obvious, as ratings stop reflecting what people actually think and instead just reflect the “herd mentality” of the general public. As a result, while the ratings/choices of other people are certainly an important factor to take into account when making a decision, one should view this information with a small degree of skepticism as they might not actually be truthfully representative of other’s opinions.