As a rational consumer, how would you distinguish between some intentional "keep pulling the slot machine" failure rate and the intrinsic failure rate?

I feel like saying "the market will fix the incentives" handwaves away the lack of information on internals. After all, look at the market response to Google making their search less reliable - sure, an invested nerd might try Kagi, but Google's still the market leader by a long shot.

In a market for lemons, good luck finding a lime.

FWIW, kagi is better than Google