alt Hacker NewsAh, but the naive public still broadly believes in peer review, and that high profile journals do good review. And the prominence and reputation that comes from these journals arguably then relies on this (increasingly false) public perception.
Would scientists feel the same if the public was more educated about how bad journals and peer review are? Not so easy to disentangle IMO.
The naive public does not believe anything in particular about peer review. They think new scientific results are significant when they read about them in the popular media, that’s it.
People who do need to work professionally with peer review, do understand what it actually does and its limitations.
You seem stuck somewhere in the middle, caring deeply about a system you don’t seem to fully understand.