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Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

fakespot.com

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Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#291

Post by TechBro8615 »

franga2000 wrote: post #161
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #127

You'd think that Mozilla has an excess of funding and has covered absolutely all needs in the browser space leading them to branch out like this... but the browser really needs a lot more hands and funding, I honestly can't make sense of this. And Fakespot: they present themselves as a company that focuses on detecting AI-generated content from human-generated content. It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mo…

> It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mole against the all the biggest AI companies in the world. That's exactly what they're doing with the biggest ad trackers and browser vendors. A lot of Mozilla's "side-projects" are stupid and I also agree they should focus more on Firefox, but this one is pretty in line with their general mission of "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".

Didn't Rust originate as a Mozilla side project? Or maybe I'm misremembering and they were just one of the early adopters of it in Servo.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#292

Post by whinenot »

rasz wrote: post #286
kbd wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how things would be different if Microsoft never gave them that life-line when they needed it.

Microsoft never gave them any lifeline. Microsoft was caught shipping stolen Apple Quicktime code and quietly settled with Apple to the tune of $150mil and shipping Apple versions of Office/IE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/29/microsoft_paid_apple_... "the [QuickTime] patent dispute was resolved with cross-licence and significant payment to Apple." The…

Fun fact: Steve borrowed my friend's cell phone for this call which became the cover photo.[0]

[0]https://infostory.com/2013/08/18/steve-jobs-thank-you-bill-g...

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#293

Post by asdadsdad »

tornato7 wrote: post #77
ve55 wrote: post #13

How do they expect to lead in identifying fake content when the problem is intractable if adversaries are even somewhat competent? You can collect heuristics which may work here and there to stay ahead in this cat and mouse game, but when adversaries use AI models properly, there is no way to differentiate.

The problem is not intractable if the analysis of reviews is statistical and reputation-based instead of content-based. They can look at how many reviews were added over time, how the product page has changed over time, if the reviewers are genuine users or if they only leave 5-star reviews on a handful of sketchy products, etc. Of course, it would be much easier for Amazon to do this, because they could look at IP a…

This is the oldest conundrum in Trust & Safety. The target party (Amazon) has pretty much all of the rich data (IPs, cards, addresses) while the interested party (usually a small company) is trying to scrape their way to solve a problem that the first party is half-assed interested in solving because they (1) have an internal "abuse" team to deal with it already and/or (2) are probably making money by keeping the problem alive either directly or indirectly.

As if the above is not already, there's one more complication: the interested small company needs to pitch their solution as a service to the platform because in general that's the only interested party of real business value. i.e. end users would not pay for such protection or won't pay enough.

Apply it to social media impersonation and scams, Adtech scams, etc etc.

Fun stuff.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#294

Post by thayne »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #291
franga2000 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mole against the all the biggest AI companies in the world. That's exactly what they're doing with the biggest ad trackers and browser vendors. A lot of Mozilla's "side-projects" are stupid and I also agree they should focus more on Firefox, but this one is pretty in line with their general mission of "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".

Didn't Rust originate as a Mozilla side project? Or maybe I'm misremembering and they were just one of the early adopters of it in Servo.

Rust is different though, because its purpose was to make Firefox more secure. So the ultimate goal was to improve the browser. Maybe there is some way this acquisition leads to a better browser, but I don't see it.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#295

Post by nl »

rasz wrote: post #286
kbd wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how things would be different if Microsoft never gave them that life-line when they needed it.

Microsoft never gave them any lifeline. Microsoft was caught shipping stolen Apple Quicktime code and quietly settled with Apple to the tune of $150mil and shipping Apple versions of Office/IE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/29/microsoft_paid_apple_... "the [QuickTime] patent dispute was resolved with cross-licence and significant payment to Apple." The…

MS buying Apple stock involved a pretty complicated deal that also involved settling a number of court disputes between the two companies, Apple agreeing to ship Internet Explorer for Mac (rather than Netscape) and MS agreeing to ship Office for at least 5 more years.

At the time and subsequently it was absolutely seen as a lifeline.

For example:

> Providing the biggest sign of hope yet for ailing Apple Computer, Microsoft today announced it was forging a new era of cooperation with its longtime rival that includes an investment of $150 million. [snip] News of the alliance sent Apple's stock up $7 a share, or 35 percent

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19970806&slug...

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#296

Post by nl »

lights0123 wrote: post #186
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood what geolocation was supposed to be within the context of of a desktop browser. If a website asks for this information, and I approve, what information is transmitted that couldn't be determined serverside via geoip?

BSSIDs of nearby WiFi networks that are compared to lists sent by mobile devices with real GPS

I don't think the BSSIDs are sent using the HTML5 location service.

Instead your computer operating system sends the BSSIDs to another service, get the location back and then your browser uses this location service to send a lat,long to the requesting website.

See https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mh35873/mac and https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-location...

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#297

Post by kevingadd »

vhcr wrote: post #258
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood what geolocation was supposed to be within the context of of a desktop browser. If a website asks for this information, and I approve, what information is transmitted that couldn't be determined serverside via geoip?

Most MacBooks have a GPS antenna, so they will return pretty accurate location. And having a consistent API is important too, not having to care if your code is running on mobile or desktop is pretty nice.

Are you sure they don't just use WiFi SSIDs to determine a location? I can't find any evidence to support macbooks having GPS.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#298

Post by scarface74 »

kbd wrote: post #240
pfisch wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So was apple once.

I wonder how things would be different if Microsoft never gave them that life-line when they needed it.

Well seeing that never happened…

When Microsoft invested a paltry $250M in Apple, Apple had already secured a line of credit of $4 Billion.

On top of that, Apple turned around a spent $100 million the same quarter to buy out PowerComputing’s Mac license. Apple lost way more than $150 million before they became profitable.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#299

Post by scarface74 »

nl wrote: post #295
rasz wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft never gave them any lifeline. Microsoft was caught shipping stolen Apple Quicktime code and quietly settled with Apple to the tune of $150mil and shipping Apple versions of Office/IE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/29/microsoft_paid_apple_... "the [QuickTime] patent dispute was resolved with cross-licence and significant payment to Apple." The…

MS buying Apple stock involved a pretty complicated deal that also involved settling a number of court disputes between the two companies, Apple agreeing to ship Internet Explorer for Mac (rather than Netscape) and MS agreeing to ship Office for at least 5 more years. At the time and subsequently it was absolutely seen as a lifeline. For example: > Providing the biggest sign of hope yet for ailing Apple Computer, Mic…

And “their new alliance” was to keep shipping Office for the Mac like they had done for the past decade…

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#300

Post by nl »

progmetaldev wrote: post #214
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood what geolocation was supposed to be within the context of of a desktop browser. If a website asks for this information, and I approve, what information is transmitted that couldn't be determined serverside via geoip?

Although I am unfamiliar with what is sent with geolocation, I do use a VPN, and allowing geolocation on a website does pull my correct location even when connected somewhere far away.

The geolocation API uses location services on your device. This doesn't rely on your IP and instead looks at nearby WiFi access points and uses a 3rd party service to translate them to GPS locations.
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