Anyone in the know care to sum up / list alternatives?
Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
31–40 of 289 posts
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#32> 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…
I can almost assure you, the plan is to run it into the ground,
Why? Can’t imagine any realistic push for this when there’s theoretically much more money to be made by creating a product that people pay to use.
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#33Sadly, chalk up a victory for enshittification. I was a Firefox fax, now mostly use DuckDuckGo. Doesn't most of Mozilla's funding come from Google?
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#34With removal of reviews that the seller doesn't like, there's really no point to taking Amazon's star ratings or reviews seriously. It's all a big lie.
I’ve started resorting to the “x bought this month” metric instead. If a product works for thousands of people and they continue to buy 500+ units a month, clearly it is a good option. If it does end up being a bad buy, Amazon typically has a 30 day return policy for most items. Use that and get something else.
How do you know that 500 people didn't buy a scam product this month? I put as much faith in the X people bought this as I do the X people have this in their cart. It's all a way of trying to stoke FOMO
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#35Anyone in the know care to sum up / list alternatives?
I'm actively working on one at https://www.truestar.pro because I couldn't find a drop-in alternative to Fakespot. I also wrote a blog post last week about the state of alternatives: https://blog.truestar.pro/fakespot-alternatives/ (spoiler: there's not much)
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#36With removal of reviews that the seller doesn't like, there's really no point to taking Amazon's star ratings or reviews seriously. It's all a big lie.
I’ve started resorting to the “x bought this month” metric instead. If a product works for thousands of people and they continue to buy 500+ units a month, clearly it is a good option. If it does end up being a bad buy, Amazon typically has a 30 day return policy for most items. Use that and get something else.
what makes you believe that the number you see in “x bought this month” is not some variant of
if (session_is_gullible_to_displayed_sales_number) {
return HIGH_SALESNUMBER;
}
?
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#37Did Fakespot work? I can't see how it would stand a chance against LLM generated reviews without even having the log (keystroke?) data that Amazon does.
The last year it's been a mixed bag.
One issue is that seller warnings would appear on Prime delivered products, which meant that the risk is then pretty much zero for the buyer.
The ratings gradings system wasn't very reliable either. I bought a few things that were rated "F" but were fine.
Today I go for a combination of sales + ratings. Amazon also has a warning for some things that are "frequently returned items" or a notice that "customers usually keep this item." And then I buy Prime delivered items, and a return is not an issue for me then.
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#389 years? I could have sworn I saw it in 2015, maybe even 2014.
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve started resorting to the “x bought this month” metric instead. If a product works for thousands of people and they continue to buy 500+ units a month, clearly it is a good option. If it does end up being a bad buy, Amazon typically has a 30 day return policy for most items. Use that and get something else.
They also tell you if a product has a high return rate, which is helpful.
Except with clothes and especially belts, I've noticed. It seems like everybody buys three of the clothes they buy and returns two of them. It makes it harder to identify shitty clothes.
Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews
#40"Mozilla couldn't find a sustainable model" seems to be a recurring theme.