this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 75 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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?!

[–] KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 points 2 months ago

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

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 43 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)
[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 2 points 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

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 11 points 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.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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@feddit.nu 5 points 2 months ago

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

[–] Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 2 months ago

killedbymozilla.com

Sucks, these were both somewhat useful services (pocket particularly)

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

What a terrible day to hear about Fakespot for the first time :(

[–] KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

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

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

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

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If it's open source how easy will it be for others then to game the system?

[–] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 1 points 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.

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I use pocket to easily sent sites to my e reader.

[–] TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 months ago

Same! This is really unfortunate.

[–] fireshell@kbin.earth 1 points 2 months ago

Normally postpone to read in the e-book this is Readeck, Wallabag and LinkWarden (taste and color), I have Self-Hosted Wallabag through KOReader.

[–] Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Owho indeed

[–] fireshell@kbin.earth 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] hellisfulloftacos@lemmy.one 3 points 2 months ago

I never thought to do this.

[–] SilliusMaximus@mander.xyz 7 points 2 months ago

Oh nooo.. less bloat? anyway

[–] zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I kind of liked visiting https://getpocket.com/explore just to read some of the stories they had posted there, but oh well.

Is Mozilla on its last legs?

EDIT: a more highbrow alternative to the pocket explore articles is Arts & Letters Daily.

[–] secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 months ago

Cool now kill everything else and go back to just being a fucking browser

[–] Lemmchen@feddit.org 5 points 2 months ago

Thank you, I've hated pocked ever since the forced integration.

[–] fireshell@kbin.earth 2 points 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.