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  • Karna
    13•2 months ago

    Mozilla should make Fakepost source code open-source so that people (with right hardware) can self-host it.

      • @[email protected]
        1•2 months ago

        There are open source tools for analyzing if github stars are fake, and they work reliably.

        The kind of people that fake reviews/stars target are not the kind of people that are going to be verifying things.

        As long as Amazon doesn’t crack down, there isn’t really a need to game the system.

    • @[email protected]English
      3•2 months ago

      Seriously. If they’re not even interested in making money off it anymore then why not?

  • melroy
    14•2 months ago

    Owho! This was one of the only useful services provided by Mozilla. Well fk it.

    • ScrubblesEnglish
      25•2 months ago

      It’s astounding how stupid that decision was. Fakespot, quite literally a device to help deter people from buying products, was gobbled up by way too much money by Mozilla - who - apparently wanted it to make profit? How?! Why?! Why did they even buy it?

      I think it was just executive idiocy. They searched for extensions with the term privacy in them, bought it, and thought it would make their product worth more. I’m getting really tired of companies just sunsetting products the instant they don’t make money.

      We really need an open version of fakespot.

      • @[email protected]
        2•2 months ago

        I think it can be VERY valuable especially today with all the ai spam.

        It’s not about buying less, it’s about people making you a trusted source when they look to buy.

        I cannot believe they are stupidly abandoning this, it could be a gold mine

      • @[email protected]
        4•2 months ago

        Teixeira v Mozilla (2024):

        Apart from Firefox, none of Mozilla’s other product offerings were profitable, with the Pocket product notably being allowed to operate in a state of negative profitability for over 5 years before Mr. Teixeira joined Mozilla.

    • @[email protected]
      4•2 months ago

      what’s up with ending FakeSpot? They just bought that.

      Assuming the tool was not accepted and used well enough by the user base. Also Mozilla got all user data and the technology. Maybe they plan on a new project that implements part of it in the future? Mozilla is currently experimenting a lot. Shutting down lot of services should be expected.

      • lime!English
        5•2 months ago

        it was never available outside the usa i think. hard to get useful market penetration then

    • @[email protected]
      11•2 months ago

      I expect that Fakespot already had problems funding themselves, and thus they were a relatively cheap acquisition, and now it turned out they couldn’t cover their own costs as part of Mozilla either. But I’ve never used it so I have no idea.

  • ScrubblesEnglish
    71•2 months ago

    God damnit so they bought Fakespot, an extension that actually did good, hiding fake botted reviews and reanalyzing them - and now they’re killing it. It was literally an extension to help prevent unnecessary buying. Why the hell did they even buy it?

    We acquired Fakespot in 2023 to help people navigate unreliable product reviews using AI and privacy-first tech. While the idea resonated, it didn’t fit a model we could sustain.

    Then why did you buy it you idiots?!

    • Karna
      11•2 months ago

      I’m also exactly on the same boat as you; I use Fakepost frequently and now it will be canned by Mozilla. The alternative I found is https://reviewmeta.com/, but it’s quite slow and can’t cover all domains of Amazon.

      • ScrubblesEnglish
        2•2 months ago

        I’ll give it a try, but yeah very disappointed

  • fireshell
    9•2 months ago

    Imagine that someone collected and kept the bookmarks there, and now they will disappear. Another reason to remember that you do not need to store anything important remotely.

    • @[email protected]English
      9•2 months ago

      This is why whenever I want to save a news article, I actually save it to my computer as a PDF. Not only can your online bookmark store be shut down, the article itself can be deleted or edited especially if it’s a hot button issue.

  • fireshell
    2•2 months ago

    Setup Miniflux to fetch all my feeds, which I can parse through manually during the day and send over the choice pieces to Wallabag for later reading, either at lunch or at nighttime using my phone or KOReader.