Can we please stop with the browser bloat? This is something that should be a plug-in, not a kitchen sink feature.
Agreed. This is well outside the scope of native browser functions. Firefox already has a rich extensions ecosystem. They can just include the extension with the browser by default for all I care, but as a native feature, this makes no sense.
They do that. Screenshot upload and so on are handled as extensions.
Firefox extension platform frontend is a mess and has been for years.
I actually don’t agree, and the reason is - non tech people. You and me can install plugins but ordinary people don’t do that. So the default experience must be good, offering improvements to the experience over Google Chrome.
Otherwise all privacy features could also be plugins. Imagine if that was true. Firefox would have no identity and you would have to install plugins and make it your own.
So some features should be built in. Maybe the ability to get pop-ups about false reviews will actually make users go “wow that is so useful”.
Compromise: Develop it as a Plugin and then install it by default. That way people who don’t want the feature can easily remove it completely. That approach would likely also reduce the number of Firefox forks whose sole purpose is to remove the new features some consider bloat.
That’s actually what Firefox usually did for these kind of features. They’re usually delayed as system add-ons.
Good solution, perhaps two simple options at browser install: Default / Custom. That way you don’t have to uninstall all the stuff at the end.
Or make it so that people have a choice to add some of the extension features when installing the browser. Debloating is not fun
Most people don’t want a 45th prompt when they just want to install firefox to check facebook and their mail
Sometimes it feels like debloating is a hobby to people with little to show for it
…you would have to install plugins and make it your own.
Reminds me of gnome.
Now, let’s talk about adblockers… Oh, wait, Google would get upset if FF had an inbuilt adblocker and could stop giving us those $weet money…
Blockers need to be an extension, keeps everyone honest.
Use LibreWolf. It’s Firefox with pre-installed uBlock Origin and pre-configured privacy settings. It also doesn’t have any of the Firefox bloat like Pocket
No way I’m giving market share to gecko and, thus, to Mozilla. I just point how how hypocrite they are. I’ll keep satisfyingly using Brave.
If Google stopped sponsoring, Mozilla would go down and Google would get slammed with anti-monopoly lawsuits from the EU.
So Mozilla can do whatever they want and Google won’t stop sending them money. Since that is a lot more profitable in the long run.
Mozilla can do whatever they want and Google won’t stop sending them money.
So… What are they waiting for? Are they going to rely on gorhill for ever?
You want Mozilla choosing what gets blocked?
Sure, as long as we still have options to disable their blocker and use a 3rd party one if we choose. It’s astounding how many users don’t bother to install an adblocker and it would be a massive improvement for those users who don’t know better.
There’s been more than one occasion that I’ve used a family member’s PC and they have Firefox installed without a single extension, they didn’t even know that extensions existed.
I’d say these should be “recommended plug-ins” but imho FF/Moz embarassed themselves on that front with the whole “Pocket” thing.
I agree and I worry about what options they’ll remove from about:config next to make room for or force the acceptance of new features like they have a habit of doing.
There’s LibreWolf. It allows you to disable many things that you can’t disable in normal Firefox. It also has uBlock Origin pre-installed and it’s pre-configured for privacy.
+1. When Edge added a price tracker / financing thing, the same people threw a fit.
If you were pro that, you should be pro this.
Just use LibreWolf if you want debloated Firefox
Librewolf isn’t just a debloated version of Firefox. It’s built with a completely different goal of being extra locked down for privacy. More so than the defaults of Firefox. Also, it doesn’t even include auto update functionality unless you’re using a package manager.
It’s built with a completely different goal of being extra locked down for privacy. More so than the defaults of Firefox.
That’s good, isn’t it?
Also, it doesn’t even include auto update functionality
I completely forgot this was even as thing because I exclusively use Linux and install/update everything with a package manager. You can also use Chocolatey on Windows or Homebrew on macOS. I feel like more people should use package managers, by using them you avoid having to download some random executables from shady websites and your system doesn’t get bloated up by 423942389 update daemons that are constantly running in the background.
That’s good, isn’t it?
It is, but it’s also not for everyone
Also, I strongly don’t expect everyday users to use package managers. And personally, I like having notifications in the app whenever it’s time to update so I can take action right there.
It is, but it’s also not for everyone
Why? Pretty much every website works fine on LibreWolf.
I like having notifications in the app whenever it’s time to update
I mean, yeah, sure, it would be great if LibreWolf had an auto-update functionality, for me it’s not a deal breaker though.
Amazon only operates in 58 countries, so it’s basically useless for everyone else. But the company they acquired (fakespot) seems to do more than amazon, but that still does not make it worth packaging it with the browser
I bought an 4.7 rated amplifier on Amazon that broke the first day. Looking at the reviews closer, I noticed they were 100% paid reviewers.
When I tried to leave a negative review, Amazon stopped me, giving a generic message about fake reviews on this product. This product is still out their with a high rating and no way for actual purchasers like me to warn other customers.
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I’ve gotten into the habit of never buying anything from Amazon
FTFY. I don’t even have an account there.
I only use it for 2 dollar Amazon prime video + gaming sub that I got when Apple App Store glitched.
How do these analyzers determine if a review is fake?
It’s some ML/AI thing that analyzes the review content.
I honestly have no idea how accurate it is either, but I guess if it gives a strong ranking back you’d probably be best to take that into consideration.
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That’s appalling customer service.
Amazon stopped me, giving a generic message about fake reviews on this product
Can you elaborate? I’ve never experienced this and would like to understand how they do it.
I’ve had this multiple times.
Tried to leave a big detailed helpful negative review and it gets flagged for being suspicious, with no copy of the review attached so I have to write it all again. And then it gets removed again.
I just looked in my emails. The exact phrasing was “We have reviewed our decisions and concluded that the product you received is authentic. As a result, we removed your review specific to this product. This ensures other customers see reviews that reflect the current shopping experience.”
Most recently it happened with a body trimmer, where I never questioned the inauthenticity, and then a zojirushi travel mug that I genuinely believe was a fake, and attached a lot of evidence.
Give it 2 stars instead of 1.
And never read the 5-star reviews.
Amazing. Thanks for the description.
They’ve blocked my review on a shower chair that was absolutely not rated for what they said. I nearly fell on my butt and my skinnier partner said it was too wobbly. They’ve blocked the negative review 5 times saying I questioned the authenticity of the product and they have confirmed it. I knew it was Medline brand. I’ve had to file a FTC complaint which I expect to be worthless.
Do you mean Vine? I can tell you a few things about that.
Yep vines, never paid attention to them until this happened.
Are they all fake or something?
Customers who were sent free products “to honesty review”
Are fake reviews even a problem worth bothering with? The far bigger problem is that most reviews are just devoid of useful information. “Thing arrived and box looked pretty” is what most of them boil down to. If they are fake or not doesn’t make a difference. Even a review that puts effort into itself, is largely useless when the writer didn’t have multiple competing products at hand to compare. And on top of that you have the issue that products will frequently change under the hood, so even if the product was good a year ago, there is no guarantee you are getting the same thing when you order it today.
The whole online shopping landscape is a complete mess and fake reviews are really just the tiny tip of the iceberg. To really improve the situation you’d need some “Consumer Reports”-type effort that objectively evaluates a products performance and compares it to the competition. Depending on random people on the Internet to do the reviewing is kind of a lost cause to begin with.
My favourite is someone who rates it 1 star because they got it late.
You’re reviewing the item you wet wipe, not Katie who works for Evri/Hermes…
If Amazon had visible seller reviews, I would be more inclined to agree.
Then again, if people would actually say who their sellers were, I would be less inclined to agree.
Of course they are a problem? The real issue is the star ratings in aggregate of course, but the value in individual reviews is detecting patterns - “didn’t like the lock thing” “latch was loose” “maybe it’s just me, but the latch didn’t feel solid” “the lock broke off within a week”. You start to see trouble spots if you know how to skim actual reviews.
So to get that value, you don’t restrict input, you leave it open, the “pretty box” people aren’t ideal, but it’s fine because it allows for the breadcrumbs that tell the larger truth. It’s ridiculous to expect normal, busy people to do “consumer reports” style reviews for every small kitchen sponge and packet of stickers sold online?
With Amazon there’s also the problem of them combining reviews of entirely different products into a single product’s page. I have no idea why they do this. There are also sellers who switch the product on the page while keeping the positive reviews for an earlier product.
This right here. It should be illegal to do this. I discovered this I think last year and it blew my mind, it’s straight up misleading the consumer.
I avoid those as soon as I notice the signs, but I’ve found less and less instances over time (which is a relief since there used to be loads of pages like that). I thought I read somewhere it’s against Amazon’s own rules to do this. Not 100% sure though.
Are fake reviews even a problem worth bothering with?
For me, the answer is mostly “no” because I just assume everything (except certain name-brand items that I did my homework on elsewhere) on Amazon/Ebay/Aliexpress/etc. is marginally-functional crap and adjust my expectations accordingly.
If anything, the only signals I go by on those sites are the number of ratings and reviews (not their content) as indications of popularity, following the “wisdom of crowds.”
Are fake reviews even a problem worth bothering with?
I feel like this is the case. Whenever I have a new hobby and need to make a purchase, I rely a lot on reviews of others because it’s impossible to guarantee the quality of anything. Look at Doc Marten’s today, they fucking suck, and this is a “known” brand. Now how about buying all sorts of weird shit from other countries or small companies that aren’t well known enough.
Yes for consumers this is a problem.
The whole online shopping landscape is a complete mess and fake reviews are really just the tiny tip of the iceberg. To really improve the situation you’d need some “Consumer Reports”-type effort that objectively evaluates a products performance and compares it to the competition. Depending on random people on the Internet to do the reviewing is kind of a lost cause to begin with.
This would be a welcome solution.
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Stiftung Warentest is such a thing in Germany.
The far bigger problem is that most reviews are just devoid of useful information. “Thing arrived and box looked pretty” is what most of them boil down to. If they are fake or not doesn’t make a difference.
But-But how are we supposed to know how handsome/beautiful the delivery rider who delivered the parcel is???
Photos from people who received the product are useful, you never know with the marketting bs. And I would argue that random people review are important, but they are so bad right now that you got used not to look at them. Of course some will be stupid (1/5, came late), you just have to read them. Which is impossible with the 50.000 fake on every product.
I like the reviews that say “I’ve owned this for 20 minutes and it works great!” I assume most reviews are from people who just received the product (because that’s when they’ll think to write a review) and are therefore pretty useless as a guide to quality.
Yeah if you want in depth review it’s not the way to go for sure. Independant reviewer on youtube or, if you’re really desperate, reddit are better.
I love the reviews that say “I haven’t gotten it yet but I’m sure it is good” or they review UPS instead “Package arrived damaged”. They are as useful as those idiotic unpacking videos.
If I use reviews I look for ones with specific information and what the general range of negative ones are. If there are a mess of negatives ones and they are recent with details included then I pay attention.
Why would this hurt Amazon? People will just see a different set of reviews. It’s manufacturers if crappy knock-off products that should be shaking in their boots.
And unfortunately Firefox is sitting at 2 to 3% so even if Amazon were dependant on fake reviews, they have little to fear due to the low marketshare.
I would assume the whole point of a feature like this is to help them get new users.
I’ll be switching to libre wolf because of this.
No one cares
Well I’ll always use Firefox, no question about it. There is incredible value in using a browser with no alterior motivations, no additional products to sell you, no reason to spy on you.
Amazon makes a lot of money facilitating the sales of counterfeit goods.
Sure. But they’d make similar amounts of money (possibly more) by selling non-counterfeit goods.
They want their market to be open to third parties, because otherwise those third parties are gonna launch competing platforms. Better if they stick with Amazon, and Amazon gets a cut of the sale. There are thousands and thousands of Chinese companies selling products on Amazon, and many of them are fantastic deals. If Amazon blocks them, they all move to AliExpress, and maybe that really takes off and bites into Amazon’s market share.
But when you consider the sheer number of products offered on Amazon, it’s hard for them to separate the good-but-cheap from the crap counterfeit bullshit. And as you say…they make money either way, so it’s not the highest-priority problem to fix–though as I said in another comment, they are aware that if enough products are crap, people will lose faith in Amazon as a whole, so they’ve tried different techniques to block bullshit reviews in the past.
But if somebody else wants to put in the work to filter shitty knockoffs from the results page? Well, that’s fine with them! They make money selling you the real deal products, too–likely more, because their cut of a more expensive original product is gonna be higher.
people will lose faith in Amazon as a whole
Lol, as of this hasn’t already happened
I mean, if people have lost faith in Amazon, they sure don’t show it with the amount they spend on it.
There are some things you can really only buy there. Which is why I bigly agree with the US government that they’re a bigly monopoly bigly abusing their monopoly power (bigly).
It extra sucks for rural America where you might only have a handful of stores to pick from and all are discount stores like Walmart and Dollar General. Makes it hard to buy better quality/up market items
buy better quality/up market items
I find this to be a challenge in general. Amazon and Walmart killed recognizable name brands as quality markers. Walmart forced their suppliers (some of which were name brands) down in quality and prices in order to maintain shelf space, and Amazon is just a haven for rip-off and junk goods.
But the only places you can find quality with good warranty periods in my experience is ultra-high end suppliers in very top line stores. For instance, I’m trying to buy a leather jacket and everywhere I look both online or in person seems like a junk expo…except if you look at very high end stuff (800+ minimum, 1-2k median).
I’ve had similar problems with furniture, and even home goods recently. The only place I’ve had any luck at all is Costco.
PS: I do agree that small town America gets even more screwed because they don’t have the high end stores to speak of.
Got any examples? Between Walmart, Etsy, AliExpress, Best Buy, MonoPrice, Home Depot, and Wayfair, plus the fact that nearly every major store has online shopping and delivery…I really can’t think of anything I could only get on Amazon. To be quite frank, I think the US government’s case is sorta ridiculous.
Of course you do, you post like some type of Amazon shill.
I was looking for hardware at home depot and the dude recommended I buy what I was looking for on Amazon.
Agreed. Might actually give more faith in using Amazon.
Hmm their Amazon basics might suffer. I think Amazon basics true offering is cheap but not scam.
That was my understanding of why Amazon Basics was started, cheap not garbage to set a floor for prices and try to stop the race to the bottom
Why would this hurt Amazon?
A product with 2002 reviews suddenly has only 2 reviews, and they are not the nicest ones… Whole Amazon with 2002 gazillion reviews suddenly has only 2 gazillion… :-)
Seriously:
I guess they own several of these “companies” where you can buy fake reviews for your product. And now these are facing their revenues sinking.
Do you have any evidence of that? I used to work for Amazon (as a programmer working on financial data, not delivering packages or anything), and they took review quality pretty damn seriously. They knew full well that customers losing faith in the quality of products on Amazon, it could crater their business.
If some product with 2002 reviews suddenly drops to 2 reviews, 1.5 stars average…it’ll sink to the bottom of pages of results, and people will click on a different one, with better reviews. It’s not like they only have a couple products to offer, and they make money on more or less all of them.
I can’t even begin to count how many times I have come acrossa slew of 5 star reviews for something COMPLETELY unrelated to the listed item at the very top of search results. Product: Wood Headphone Stand. Review: This kitchen whisk is so amazing, it saved my marriage, 23 out of 5 stars.
OH and don’t forget the reviewer that when you access their profile you see that they have posted 76 reviews in a single day and every single one of them is 5 stars with the title "Great ‘X’! " where x is the product title.
Don’t get me wrong, I used Amazon back when it only sold books and I’ve been using Prime since it came out non-stop but the quality of the items, the search results, and the trust I have in the platform has gone waaaaaaaaaay down.
That’s basically an exploit. Different ‘products’ can be related, and the reviews are supposed to be useful across them. The most obvious examples are just different colors of socks, or different sizes of shirt. Sometimes it’s variants on a product: one with a handle and one without, or different models of TV with the same screen, or whatever.
But it’s not Amazon who makes those connections, it’s the companies entering product data. Some of them abuse it, and say products are related when they’re not at all. Since there’s millions of products listed, it takes time to identify and fix the false associations. In the meantime: people looking for headphone stands see reviews for whisks.
But yeah, quality has gone down. It hits some product categories a lot worse than others: cheap electronics is a shitshow.
I think he’s just suggesting that the plugin filters it down to what an algorithm considers legitimate. These plugins usually only filter when you click the item so it wouldn’t necessarily move the result down, just reduce potential purchases (which would eventually drop the result.
E: I’m probably stating the obvious above but the damage to bottom line might be after repeat findings until a user ultimately decides Amazon is mostly untrustworthy.
I guess
Do you have any evidence of that?
LOL
It won’t. It’s clickbait. It’s dumb.
Edit- tHeY’rE iN TrOuBle isn’t clickbait? Fuck off. This might dip into their profits, slightly, but Amazon is hardly in trouble. FFS.
I’m skeptical… how are the fake reviews identified and how do you avoid flagging real ones?
They’re just building Fakespot into the browser so the same way Fakespot does, by analyzing the user who posted the review
What does “analyzing” mean?
They detect when a whole bunch of reviews are posted at exactly the same time, or are posted on a fixed schedule, or use extremely similar language, or with a brand new account…
Basically they use spam-detection techniques on reviews.
What does “techniques” mean?
It’s that Lego that’s slightly more advanced
Algorithms.
What does “algorithms” mean?
stahp
ppl gonna stop answering my real questions and I’ll be tech illiterate firebrand
Heuristics.
I just want native vertical tabs lmao
I’ve been using Sidebery with some userchrome to hide the top tabs, and it’s a workable solution, but far from ideal.
I also wish keybindings were configurable. For example, with the “/” search, ctrl-g/G to go to next/prev match is really weird
Tried Sidebery too with some basic hidden UI CSS but having to keep it up to date makes it clunky at times, leagues away from Edges implementation where it’s just a toggle away.
what’s a vertical tab
Where the tabs are on the side of the desktop screen instead of the top.
And i just want a tab bar on Android tablets/foldables like every other browser.
Amazon is in trouble
I don’t see why. Fake reviews don’t benefit Amazon. The review information is a value-add for them, and fake reviews detract from that.
Hell, if it actually is able to reliably detect fake reviews on Amazon – which I doubt, but let’s roll with it – Amazon might buy the company that does the fake review detection to get it so that they can filter it.
I don’t agree with the assertion that fake reviews don’t benefit them, but I may be missing something. Reviews help drive consumer behavior and more reviews lead to more sales from those who are unable or unwilling to be more discerning. (Amazon takes a cut)
For others, it the idea or presence of fake reviews might drive them to a “trusted” Amazon Basics alternative, also leading to sales with a higher margin for Amazon.
Additionally, recycling listing ASINs is a common tactic that Amazon could stop and is a source of “fake” (or at least, irrelevant in content and misleading in score) reviews. There’s minimal enforcement of rules for review integrity, such as verified purchases or quid pro quo “warranties” and “free gifts” for 5 star reviews.
All the evidence I see points to Amazon preferring the status quo.
I tried posting a negative review that mentioned a quid pro quo (offered a gift card in exchange for a 5 star review) and Amazon removed it for not being relevant to the product. So baseless 5 star reviews are allowed but not 1 star reviews.
I’ve had that happen as well, but technically they’re right, removed about the seller isn’t relevant to the end product. That’s why there needs to be a seller rating section for them, with independent reviews / scores based on them as sellers which shows next to their seller names, same idea as eBay feedback.
“Brushing” scams seem way too common and easily executed through Amazon in order for them to not be turning a blind eye about it, imo. My mom was sent random LED lights for months through their return program despite never ordering them or hardly using amazon at all before she figured out what was happening. It feels like at least 5% of all my purchases come with a policy breaking email from the seller contacting me asking me for a five-star review in exchange for a free gift. Or even just contacting me 6 months later from a totally unrelated purchase and offering me a gift for no reason in exchange for a five-star review. Oh, they’ll sure reimburse the money it costs to buy it! Because they really just want that five-star review! And Amazon seems to be happy allowing five-star reviews for products that are given away for free and even has a tag to let other users know, but just this method is frowned upon? I doubt it.
The dedicated websites to check amazon reviews like fakespot.com have been almost completely beaten. What is Firefox going to do differently?
Per the article, they are integrating Fakespot into Firefox, so it won’t be different. Hopefully the tool can be improved
Yeah. Fakespot is no better at all. The best thing to do right now is know if a product has only been listed for less than a couple months and has hundreds of reviews, it’s BS.
Next up; go to the review section, sort by newest, and read those reviews. Usually the fake reviews are flooded in early and you get more real ones in later. I’ve seen things rated at like 4.5 stars with 500 reviews, but then half of the 10 most recent reviews will rate it 1 star.
Yeah it doesn’t seem too difficult to me to see when reviews seem fishy. I have never tried fakespot myself.
Another thing to check is that the reviews match what the product is for - I have seen a lot of Amazon listings where the seller will have a product up for a long time, get a lot of positive reviews, then change the listing to something else. So it looks like the listing has been up for a long time with good reviews but it’s really a different item. Then note the seller and don’t buy anything from them lol.
I have a Firefox extension from this website, and another one… So I’ve had this all along. I guess it’s great to hear they are building something into the product itself, though.
I’d really prefer it stay as an extension, honestly. The whole of the userbase does not need this and I hate software bloat.
Given the amount of malicious extensions that have slips through the cracks over the years, I’d rather it baked in. Something like that is very much inline with what Mozilla is all about in the end. Useful features that many would want isn’t bloat.
So how much do I have to pay to boost the Fakespot rating of my product listing?
I must admit that I do like the built in page translation, which I guess was made by a similar team using ML and all. Maybe I will like this too? Feels a bit… niche. Maybe it’s a stepping stone to any misinformation at some point?
Edit This actually might not be coming as a browser feature at all. Mozilla is trying to increase the size of their Mozilla.ai team, so perhaps it’s really looking for people with AI knowledge with web tech and a track record of using it for a ethical purpose. This team would be well placed to build pretty much any AI based tool for the firefox ecosystem.
It’s definitely coming as a browser feature, Mozilla has confirmed it :) https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/review-checker-review-quality
It is very nice to see Mozilla doing quite useful/helpful projects from time to time.
I’m curious to see what Mozilla will do with the shopping assistant portion. Lots of browser extensions, and potentially even some of the Mozilla sponsors offer these types of features, and if Mozilla just stamps them out all at once by integrating that feature, it might lose them some financial support.
On the other hand, I do hope they don’t start amassing huge amounts of training data from their uses. It would be a real bummer to not have a decent browser option anymore.
I’ve already been using the fakespot extension for a few years, and honestly, it feels pretty useless. I’ve seen it give A and B scores for products that I know have fake reviews. And on Amazon or Walmart and similar sites, we already know that the reviews are bullshit, so what difference does it really make for it to tell me that? It’s not like I have any better option in most cases.
Eh, Fakespot has been decent enough for me. I think it works best when there are a lot of reviews, it’s not very helpful when it’s like 5-10 reviews on a product.
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LibreWolf will probably have us covered.
It’s a fork of Firefox without Mozilla telemetry, and defaults set to “privacy on” basically.
I switched a couple months ago and am perfectly happy with it after well over a decade with Firefox.
We’re switching to Firefox!
Just did it.
firefox hitting homeruns on user-friendliness with actually useful features that protect you online, while all other browser just wanna put more ads in front of your face.
And so it begins, the marketing world has got its claws in AI.
I mean, Fakespot already does the same thing. They rate the product based on the quality of reviews (whether or not they’re fake).
Yeah sorry, I wasn’t aware the AI wars already spread into marketing-land
It’s not even just AI. It’s also real people being paid to leave fake reviews.
Plenty of fake reviews are AI written now too. For a while you could go on any product page and Ctrl+F for “as a large language model” and spot several copy/pasted reviews with no proofreading that out themselves
