What do we do now, as our trust in reviews has been broken?

Read this excellent Medium article on "The Age of the Negative Review Is Over" by @jenniferrabin  thinking about no response to worse than negative when we consider attention. 

Have a different issue with reviews and that is that I no longer "TRUST" them, principally because of the emerging and growing set of rules, revisions, lies and so much material on what to do to get one deleted, reversed or hidden. 

I have come to depend on feedback and reviews for choices, the ability to read others thinking has been so beneficial for online booking and purchases. The reason is that a while ago we booked a wonderful 4* hotel in the 3 valleys; to read the week before we left a very long, detailed and negative review. We left for skiing a tad worried. We arrived, the staff were amazing, the location was spot on, the food was excellent and the lodging was exactly as described. The previous empty nester reviewer obviously booked a 4* expecting a 6* and as it was a specialist family hotel for teens, it would be expected to be overrun with the next generation.  I learnt that Irrespective of negative or positive, I should think about who the person was and their expectation. 

However, I have been a keen and now long term user of a number of shared services from rides to sleeps to food.  I leave reviews when excellent to promote,  no reviews when OK and factual reviews when a problem.  Recently I had a poor experience, so I thought only fair to describe the issues, be straight and explain what was wrong/ misleading and why I would not recommend, but based on what I expected.   

What it turns out is the owner was a master of the negative review, blocking the review, getting it taken down and then a new review posted in the same period I took the service with positive, glowing reports (which is why I used the unit) - entirely fabricated.  

So a quick search to find the new reviewer is a friend of the owner on Facebook, indeed most of the reviewers were also friends on Facebook.  Many of the "friends" also used the same service and were cross posting positive reviews. 

I wrote the the service provider to ask why my review was taken down, this was the most interesting.  The receiver of my review had complained saying I has left a negative review as I had a similar offer on the same site and that I was being anti-competitive, trying to gain more business by putting theirs down.  Their review process was to remove and delete my review and not enable me to question it.  Indeed I have been blocked from further reviews.

So my "trust" in reviews has gone as the platforms are more interested in the economics of their providers than the experience of the user, assuming that the market is big enough.  Unless the review processes are changed on the existing service platforms it will open up the way for new providers who put the customers, customer first.  

However, if data ( including) reviews start from the users and are available from the user, this will change the market.  Perhaps it becomes less about trust in the silo's and platforms to do the right thing and more about the user being empowered with their own data?