Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

Post by colinbartlett » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 1:29 AM UTC

bentcorner wrote: post #11

> 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…

Post by TylerE » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 1:59 AM UTC

burnt-resistor wrote: post #19

bentcorner wrote: post #11

> 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…

Mozilla seems infected by corporate board members who probably have conflicts of interest including investments in Amazon, Google, etc.

Post by doppio19 » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 2:09 AM UTC

Solomoriah wrote: post #44

I sell books on Amazon.com through their KDP Direct platform, and I have one book with two different covers; each is its own "book" in their catalog. FakeSpot repeatedly marked reviews I knew were valid as fake; I knew this based on the fact that the same reviewer reviewed the "other" book and that review was NOT flagged as fake. And this happened multiple times, and sometimes the wording of the two reviews were diff…

Post by pogue » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 2:17 AM UTC

doppio19 wrote: post #24

pogue wrote: post #18

I 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 There's ReviewMeta.com which doesn't work 100% of the time and is no longer actively maintained as far as I can tell.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 mentioned it briefly in the blog post, but this is exactly what I'm working on! Essentially, a spiritual successor to Fakespot that combines LLM analysis, more traditional ML techniques, and rule-based heuristics to detect fake reviews. I'll likely go the "subscription with generous free trial" route, to avoid meeting the same fate as Fakespot. I'm actively working on a prototype and have a landing page at https://…

Post by topato » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 2:22 AM UTC

aspenmayer wrote: post #29

alwa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure does get there quick though. And heads back to the warehouse for free if you don’t like it.

Counterfeit items are contraband and may not be legal to be shipped or mailed, as they are evidence that a crime may have occurred. To return counterfeit items for material benefit to the seller or agent in order to receive a refund is possibly helping the fraud to continue by allowing the destruction of property/evidence. I advise all folks who suspect counterfeit goods to report them to the FTC and their local poli…