Comment on Mozilla is shutting down Pocket, their read-it-later and content discovery app, and Fakespot, their browser extension that analyzes the authenticity of online product reviews.

cascadia99@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• lemmyingly@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Fakespot has always felt inaccurate to me. Once every 6 months or so I gave it a go to see if any of the updates have improved it but it never felt like it did to me.

  Furthermore, I don’t see the point in Fakespot since Amazon bends over backwards to accept returns for any reason.

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  • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Furthermore, I don’t see the point in Fakespot since Amazon bends over backwards to accept returns for any reason.

    Why go through that hassle if you can avoid it in the first place?

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    • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Because I’m buying the $8 option from a company called “XYBENOZ”. Without reading the reviews I already know there’s a 56% chance of failure, but I’m willing to take that risk because then it’s Amazon’s problem.

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  • spector@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I stopped trusting it much when I noticed there’s a huge difference between the same product on amazon.ca and amazon.com. On one domain it can give something an F grade while on the other domain it will have an A grade.

    It’s a nice idea but when you think it about it’s actually kind of hard to determine the quality of a particular listing apart from the obvious checks you can do yourself. Like if the seller is some random drop shipper or actually Amazon or the manufacturer.

    Judging reviews with whatever AI system they use is not very accurate anyways.

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  • Empricorn@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Your 2nd point doesn’t make any sense. Sure, you can spend the time returning things. If they’re bad and you know they’re bad. But what if they’re just bad enough?

    Take guitar pedals, for example. I know nothing about guitar pedals. I don’t know the brands, I don’t know the features I should look for, what they should cost, nothing. A company can purchase thousands, tens of thousands, or more fake reviews from a bot farm run by wage slaves. I might buy their subpar pedal based on the good review score. It’s fine, it works well enough from my initial testing and doesn’t die…

    But what I wanted was to purchase one of the better ones, which the false reviews told me it was! I could have spent the same or less for a better product, that rewarded the company that made the superior product. And I might not even know it, at least until it’s too late to return. That’s (one of) the problems with how bad fake reviews have gotten.

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    • lemmyingly@lemm.ee ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I’ve never heard of anyone use a shop’s reviews to decide what product to purchase, so you’re literally the first to me.

      If I want a product that I have no idea about then I’ll go to forums, YouTube channels, etc about that type of thing and see what they say about it all. They’ll be people who’ve done product reviews and comparisons. And so they’re the people with the knowledge and their the people that care.

      So in your example of wanting a guitar pedal I’d be visiting music and electric guitar places on the internet to gather knowledge on the product range.

      Once I hit the online store, I’ve already decided what I want to purchase. And so the store reviews are more about the seller themselves and whether the product is genuine/fake, or a good/bad version of the white label item.

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  • cascadia99@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I’ve also wondered about Fakespot’s accuracy. I just viewed it as one tool when doing online shopping. I’d prefer not to order crap in the first place than try to return something later.

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    • lemmyingly@lemm.ee ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I generally have already decided what to purchase before I load Amazon’s website. I also rarely purchase cheap white label products, and so Amazon’s reviews are mostly irrelevant to me. I’ve rarely needed to return items too and recently they were all my fault anyway, eg, not quite the dimensions I thought I needed.

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• dinckelman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I’ve never known about it until just now, but I wish I had, because my mom definitely needs something like that. Quite a shame

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• Empricorn@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I think it’s a good tool. I also think people and companies learned how to circumvent it and avoid being too obvious. And that was before AI! Plus, Firefox (who I didn’t even know owned it before today!) doesn’t want to enough time/money into it in a perpetual arms race…

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