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Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

fakespot.com

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Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#111

Post by ehPReth »

Logans_Run wrote: post #87
blowski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your comment, but I’m curious what “pizzled” means.

NSFW definition (depending on I.T. policies) [1] Pizzle is a Middle English word for penis, derived from Low German pesel or Flemish Dutch pezel, diminutive of pees, meaning 'sinew'. The word is used today to signify the penis of an animal, chiefly in Australia and New Zealand. [2] Interestingly, it is used in medical slang (Dictionary of medical slang -Jacob Edward) and it is defined as exhausted, or to its point: ~…

I suppose in this case it means "fucked Pocket"

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#112

Post by justinclift »

jzb wrote: post #88
bcx wrote: post #15

This feels like a good long term vision for Mozilla. The browser wars are basically over , and Mozilla as an organization would benefit from a longer term vision to improve veracity on the internet. With the ability to generate content at the cost of basically 0, figuring out what's real and not real is going to be an increasingly hard challenge. Browser stats (as of Feb): 79.7% - Chrome 8.6% - Edge 4.8% - Firefox/Mo…

Leaning hard into delivering content that you can "trust" would be an interesting direction for Mozilla. I suspect that will put some crosshairs on Mozilla as an organization, though. While that would be good for users, there will be folks who don't like the idea of spotting fake content or doing any labeling of content...

Do you reckon they'll be the same people unhappy with Mozilla about their pro-privacy / "lets try and cut down ads" approach?

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#113

Post by nine_k »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #99
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This feels like a good long term vision for Mozilla. >The browser wars are basically over and why is that? Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. Let's not just sit back and go "Oh well, they lost nothing they could do" shrug . They built their tech in such an obtuse and opinionated way it's impossible to integrate…

To me - as a long term FF user and Mozilla critic - it looks like: Spend money on everything except browser development (>$5 billions!). Market share down the drain. Use the market share as an argument for a lost cause and spend money on everything except Browser development. Ladybird - a browser spearheaded by one person - will expose Mozilla of what it is.

Firefox the browser is still a great piece of software, literally unique, and also open-source.

Do you think any other company / organization would be able to take over it / fork it and develop it adequately? If so, where would they get the money? Many high-profile open-source projects (e.g. Python, Blender, well, Linux itself) managed to secure corporate sponsorships or donations in a much less toxic way than the Mozilla-Google deal.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#114

Post by JohnBooty »

krono wrote: post #92
Entinel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a thing that has just become a thing to say with no substance. I use FF everyday and have since the Quantum release and have few complaints.

Its great that everything just magically seems to work so well for you, but behind the curtains it took additional effort from the developers of websites you visit to make it so. Same goes for Safari and some of the less popular browsers.

I mean, this is a broad topic and I am more of a backend engineer than frontend these days.

However, I did do a lot of frontend back in the old IE6/IE7/IE8 days when you essentially had to code a whole separate front end for Microsoft's standards-flaunting mess. So this is definitely an issue I care about.

    but behind the curtains it took additional effort from 
    the developers of websites you visit to make it so
This is true, but in my (limited recent) experience often it's because Chrome implements some rando de facto new "standard" thing they cooked up so of course they are out in front of the other browsers.

So yes, you often can't run your Chrome-specific shit elsewhere without workarounds and polyfills, but this doesn't automatically mean everybody except Google is screwing up. In some cases, complaints such as yours sound like folks in 2004 complaining that their ActiveX controls work in IE but not Firefox.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#115

Post by jmann99999 »

jkestner wrote: post #18
jmann99999 wrote: post #4

I used Fakespot a few years ago. It seemed to work well at that time. I switched computers and didn't go back to it (probably out of laziness). Does the HN community still view it as a trusted source to make better buying decisions?

I use it just about any time I'm buying something on Amazon that isn't from a trusted brand's store.

Thanks for that! A few days ago I looked at returning to it but wondered if it had become gamed. I appreciate it.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#116

Post by smsm42 »

878654Tom wrote: post #16
purpleidea wrote: post #14

I'd really love for Mozilla to focus on actually... you know... building a web browser. There are 1,000's of issues firefox needs to improve, from integrating native gnome-keyring support, to performance, to porting to rust, to... Let me PM or run Mozilla for a year. We won't buy any more companies, and we're going to focus on engineering.

Why do you expect this from Mozilla but not Microsoft, Google, Apple,...?

Because Mozilla is supposed to be an alternative to Microsoft, Google, Apple,.. and not just "the same but with less money".

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#117

Post by krono »

frabcus wrote: post #85

Presume they'll bring the add-on into their standard monitoring / security checking! "This add-on is not actively monitored for security by Mozilla. Make sure you trust it before installing." https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fakespot-fake...

Many Firefox extensions including the "recommended" ones which are claimed to be actively monitored are breaking Mozilla's extension policies by secretly sending telemetry, injecting advertisements, load and execute external resources, etc.

None of the ones I reported have had their recommended status revoked, several ones have since even been allowed to publish new versions where the same violations are still present and even a few published updates that introduced additional violations.

To Mozilla: If you want to change the world, start with yourself.

To the rest: Whenever you install or update an extension, always go through its published source first. You can get to it by right-clicking the install/download button to "save as" and then simply unpacking the xpi file.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#118

Post by failbuffer »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #100
fafzv wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The browser wars are over because Firefox lost them by spending all the time patting themselves on the back about how much better they were than the competition, wasting their money on stupid stuff like this instead of improving their browser. Getting themselves into a deeper hole is unlikely to help, imo.

Remember "Firefox OS"?

It was a fantastic gamble IMO. Low chance of success, but enormous payoff if it had succeeded. Imagine a commercially viable alternative to iPhone and Android with multiple manufacturers and a completely open platform. Ultimately, I think they came to market too late and Android moved into the niche (low end market) they were targeting.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#119

Post by msla »

guestbest wrote: post #97
msla wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry about being pedantic, but is no such thing as fake content, there is only more content. This isn't pedantic, it's ignoring context: In context, "Fake" clearly means that the so-called review wasn't written by a human who had used the product. Given what a review is, and what purpose we expect reviews to serve, so-called "reviews" written by a language model are clearly fake, just like a non-driveable toy car…

Online reviews are a product, not a nebulous concept and sites like Amazon depend on them to drive sales of products or are a company’s entire unique value proposition like in the case of Yelp. The idea that reviews are not in some way manipulated at ‘fake’ since they drive capital towards or away from businesses. In other words there are no altruistic reviews. The only neutral content comes from a Random Number Gene…

A review written by a human who didn't use the product is fake, a fortiori a review written by a non-human that doesn't use any products is fake.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#120

Post by unethical_ban »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Normally I'd say... "They'd better write it in the bylaws that Mozilla isn't allowed to buy any more companies" but a system for identifying fake content on the web might (unlike all the other Mozilla acquisitions such as the thoroughly pizzled Pocket) improve the web browsing experience.

The problem with Pocket was that it was a separate brand name with a weird UX.

If it had been branded as a new "reading list" feature native to Mozilla I don't think it would have caused a stir.

I use Vivaldi now for two reasons: One, it is better than Firefox Mobile, and two, I like the ergonomics of its bookmarks and reading list sync.

Having the ability for the browser to be a suite isn't crazy.

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