Do we need to start a killedbymozilla.com?
Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
171–180 of 289 posts
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some company paid be 100 bucks to change my review to be positive so they sent the money via PayPal no problem then I changed the review to say they paid me to write a glowing review and of course Amazon ended up removing the review for being harmful to their customers
Some company said they know where I live and they will pay me a visit if I don't remove the bad review (product was dangerous). That was on Amazon.
Did you report this to the police?
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some company said they know where I live and they will pay me a visit if I don't remove the bad review (product was dangerous). That was on Amazon.
Do they know where we live? Aren't orders fulfilled by Amazon?
Amazon also has sellers that do their own fulfillment.
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon are becoming like AliExpress and Temu. They can always do it cheaper, but the quality is touch and go. Now with fake reviews it alot harder to tell what's good quality and what's not.
Amazon is great for returns. Buy $50 something from aliexpress, doesn't work, you can't do anything. Seller wont refund directly, you need to send the item back... to china... and fill out export forms and pay more than $50 for registered mail. Amazon? Doesn't work? Doesn't matter why, here's the return label, we'll refund you the moment we get the return.
I just returned something on AliExpress last week.(Wrong items sent.) Sagawa showed up at my door to collect the package, I paid nothing, and AliExpress refunded me before it even left the country once Sagawa notified them that the package was collected.
So it really depends where you live.
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you have extremely generous return policies then reviews matter less. They are still relevant if your'e trying to optimize for buy once for life, but in that case you should just be going for established brands instead, where their reputation is their review.
Brands don't mean much when they're constantly bought up by other companies and then used to whitewash poorer quality products.
Yes, trademarks don't make sense when the entity behind them can change completely. The whole point was to protect consumers.
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#176It was falling behind. The dodgy stores were getting more creative and Fakespot needed to play catch up. You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/gift card in the item in exchange for a positive review. Sure, this didn't 1:1 translate but if a user did it would look like a legitimate review. You've got a plethora of LLMs out there just itching to GENERATE. Then an expensive option I was suprised happened…
> I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience.
Why would you want 12 vacuums? What are you going to do with them? Isn't that a senseless amount of redundant objects to horde? Don't you want room for other things in your shed?
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon is awful when it comes to striking down accusatory customer reviews. Last year I (like a fool) purchased some chunky thru-hole MOSFETs on Amazon. Lo and behold, despite the datasheets promising a few amps with 3.3V at the gate, I only got a few milliamps. Obviously counterfeit - but no matter how hard I tried or how much indirection I employed, Amazon always took down my review warning others of this verifiabl…
So Amazon is complicit in fraud.
What I don't understand is why some law firm, heavy with Ivy league predators, does not eye Amazon's fraud engine as a pot of generational gold to be taken? Sure, it will take some effort, but that's a huge pot of gold just sitting in the open with this blatant fraud in broad daylight.
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#178> Mozilla couldn't find a sustainable business model for Fakespot despite its popularity I don't know if it's fair for me to armchair quarterback, but still - what was their business model when they decided to do the acquisition? From the outside looking in barely did anything whatsoever. I browse Amazon using Firefox extremely often and I don't recall seeing any helper UI pop up. Even so, what would have been their…
Why is Mozilla, supposedly a subsidiary of a nonprofit with the goal of making the internet better, looking for business models in the first place? They should be looking for donations, sponsors, government grants, etc.
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#179It was falling behind. The dodgy stores were getting more creative and Fakespot needed to play catch up. You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/gift card in the item in exchange for a positive review. Sure, this didn't 1:1 translate but if a user did it would look like a legitimate review. You've got a plethora of LLMs out there just itching to GENERATE. Then an expensive option I was suprised happened…
> I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience. Why would you want 12 vacuums? What are you going to do with them? Isn't that a senseless amount of redundant objects to horde? Don't you want room for other things in your shed?
[dead]
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#180I did search around looking for alternatives and the landscape isn't great. There's ReviewMeta.com which doesn't work 100% of the time and is no longer actively maintained as far as I can tell. TheReviewIndex.com I didn't find to be very helpful, as it doesn't index all products and sometimes just refuses to check on listings you ask it to. It seems to have some kind of subscription model, but they don't list the pri…
I’ve basically settled on only buying major brands that I already know from Amazon unless it’s something that I’m okay throwing away if it doesn’t work out. I then judge by my assessment of the bad reviews. IMHO judging these random Chinese products with the nonsense capital letter brands by actual reviews is a lost cause.
Yeah same here. The sad thing is that even with this Amazon is still better than most of the competition.