Mozilla Buys Fakespot, a Startup That Identifies Fake Reviews

Mozilla announced today that it has acquired Fakespot, a startup that offers a website and browser extension that helps users identify fake or unreliable reviews. From a report: The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Fakespot's offerings can be used to spot fake reviews listed on various online marketplaces including Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor and more. Founded in 2016, New York-based Fakespot uses an AI and machine learning system to detect patterns and similarities between reviews in order to flag those that are most likely to be deceptive. Fakespot provides a rating or grade for the product's reviews in order to help consumers make more informed decisions when making a purchase. The goal behind the company's website and browser extension is to give users the ability to quickly see where deceptive reviews may be artificially inflating a product's ranking in search engines.

Startup?

[OverlordQ]

It's be out for 7 years, at what point isn't it a startup anymore.

Can it spot AI generated reviews?

[misnohmer]

The next frontier of fake reviews will be AI generated ones.If someone asks ChatGPT to write a good or bad review, what is the accuracy with which their technology flag it? Does it get worst with newer versions of AI? How much worse between ChatGPT v3 anv v4 for example?

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

What are you talking about? Those are real reviews, created by *sentient* AI chatbots. They might have even purchased the products they are reviewing!

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

The same techniques will probably work with ChatGPT generated reviews. They look at things like use of similar language in multiple reviews, and if the review is generic rather than specifically about the product. They also look at accounts to check for ones that review a lot of products in a short space of time, or who only review products for a handful of suspicious vendors.

plz write browser

[drwho]

I donated to Mozilla in order to support the web browser. I've stopped, as they've gone off the rails these past few years, and this is just another example.

Re:

[ras]

Your right.

Who would use reviews to decide where to spend they money, and besides who uses a a web browser to read reviews?

Oh, wait ...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

What about his right?

Oh! You did mean to use the possessive "your" instead of the contraction "you're", didn't you? [insert eye roll here]

Re:

[greytree]

Millions of people use web browsers to view porn and buy guns.

Are mozilla going to invest in brothels and ammo companies ?

Moxilla must make a good browser and let startups make good addons for it.

OH, AND NOT BLOCK ADDONS FOR ANDROID FFS.

https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/add-on-support-in-new-firefox-for-android/53488/189

Re:

[ras]

Are mozilla going to invest in brothels and ammo companies ?

Probably not, because unlike an extension that weeds out bad reviews, buying brothers ad ammo companies won't help the browser weed out bad porn and dud ammo. But then you knew that.

OH, AND NOT BLOCK ADDONS FOR ANDROID FFS.

They gave their reasons for blocking some extensions: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/add-on-support-in-new-firefox-for-android/53488/193 [mozilla.org]. The reason boils down to the limited resources on mobile. Some extensions use so much

Re:

[greytree]

Mozilla Nannies MADE UP some reasons for blocking A TINY MINORITY of extensions to justify blocking almost ALL EXTENSIONS.

"Some extensions use so much they will make the browser unstable."

Yes. Disable them.
And get your stupid nanny fingers off the 99% that don't cause problems.

It's like banning cars because some of them crash.

Re: plz write browser

[DrXym]

Have you ever thought that Mozilla might want to exist without relying solely on donations and that means diversifying products? Or that it might want to implement features in the browser that enhance trust / privacy / security and make it stand out from its rivals that are constantly trying to undermine them?

HAHAHA

[stooo]

>>... Mozilla ... might want to implement features in the browser that enhance trust / privacy / security

HAHAHA, good one.

Mozilla is a zombie company

[stooo]

Mozilla is a zombie company.
They stopped making browsers, and focus on milking the shrinking market share.
A zombie just bought another zombie.

ReviewMeta

[d.dawg.fresh]

...has always been a better, more principled service. But they spent less on marketing, and were honest and nuanced about their claims.

Re:

[dcooper_db9]

I tried to check it out but Cloudflare timed out on the host side.

Cut out the middle man

[kmoser]

If companies that solicit reviews partnered with Fakespot to identify and take down fake reviews, this plugin wouldn't be necessary.

Re:

[greytree]

If companies that solicit reviews identified and took down fake reviews, this plugin wouldn't be necessary.

FTFY

They buyed it...

[ctrl-alt-canc]

...because it had excellent reviews!

What's the point?

[jbmartin6]

I've seen apparently real reviews giving 5 star ratings to godawful pieces of crap. What's the point of spotting fake reviews when the real reviews are just as useless?

fake reviews

[groobly]

On yelp, I first go the reviews that they have deprecated. That is the only place you will find the real negative reviews scattered among the haters.

Same thing for amazon reviews. Expect this thing to be useless.

Re:

[groobly]

Oops, for Amazon, I meant the 1-star reviews.

Re: fake reviews

[nullchar]

On Amazon, for example, I usually discard must 5* and 1* reviews. 2-4* is where the real details exist, assuming a reasonable paragraph of information.

Applying my human algorithm, anything too short is discarded ("I love it" or "I hate it" or "I haven't used it but my friend said it was great") same with anything too long ("my essay on why this model is the second best out there...").

I'd be interested in a privacy-focused way to filter reviews, but I'd like to somehow provide my preferences or train it myse