- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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Can we please stop with the browser bloat? This is something that should be a plug-in, not a kitchen sink feature.
Amazon only operates in 58 countries, so it’s basically useless for everyone else. But the company they acquired (fakespot) seems to do more than amazon, but that still does not make it worth packaging it with the browser
I bought an 4.7 rated amplifier on Amazon that broke the first day. Looking at the reviews closer, I noticed they were 100% paid reviewers.
When I tried to leave a negative review, Amazon stopped me, giving a generic message about fake reviews on this product. This product is still out their with a high rating and no way for actual purchasers like me to warn other customers.
Do you mean Vine? I can tell you a few things about that.
Yep vines, never paid attention to them until this happened.
Are they all fake or something?
Customers who were sent free products “to honesty review”
Are fake reviews even a problem worth bothering with? The far bigger problem is that most reviews are just devoid of useful information. “Thing arrived and box looked pretty” is what most of them boil down to. If they are fake or not doesn’t make a difference. Even a review that puts effort into itself, is largely useless when the writer didn’t have multiple competing products at hand to compare. And on top of that you have the issue that products will frequently change under the hood, so even if the product was good a year ago, there is no guarantee you are getting the same thing when you order it today.
The whole online shopping landscape is a complete mess and fake reviews are really just the tiny tip of the iceberg. To really improve the situation you’d need some “Consumer Reports”-type effort that objectively evaluates a products performance and compares it to the competition. Depending on random people on the Internet to do the reviewing is kind of a lost cause to begin with.
Of course they are a problem? The real issue is the star ratings in aggregate of course, but the value in individual reviews is detecting patterns - “didn’t like the lock thing” “latch was loose” “maybe it’s just me, but the latch didn’t feel solid” “the lock broke off within a week”. You start to see trouble spots if you know how to skim actual reviews.
So to get that value, you don’t restrict input, you leave it open, the “pretty box” people aren’t ideal, but it’s fine because it allows for the breadcrumbs that tell the larger truth. It’s ridiculous to expect normal, busy people to do “consumer reports” style reviews for every small kitchen sponge and packet of stickers sold online?
Removed by mod
Stiftung Warentest is such a thing in Germany.
Are fake reviews even a problem worth bothering with?
For me, the answer is mostly “no” because I just assume everything (except certain name-brand items that I did my homework on elsewhere) on Amazon/Ebay/Aliexpress/etc. is marginally-functional crap and adjust my expectations accordingly.
If anything, the only signals I go by on those sites are the number of ratings and reviews (not their content) as indications of popularity, following the “wisdom of crowds.”
I love the reviews that say “I haven’t gotten it yet but I’m sure it is good” or they review UPS instead “Package arrived damaged”. They are as useful as those idiotic unpacking videos.
If I use reviews I look for ones with specific information and what the general range of negative ones are. If there are a mess of negatives ones and they are recent with details included then I pay attention.
I just want native vertical tabs lmao
I’ve been using Sidebery with some userchrome to hide the top tabs, and it’s a workable solution, but far from ideal.
I also wish keybindings were configurable. For example, with the “/” search, ctrl-g/G to go to next/prev match is really weird
Tried Sidebery too with some basic hidden UI CSS but having to keep it up to date makes it clunky at times, leagues away from Edges implementation where it’s just a toggle away.
And i just want a tab bar on Android tablets/foldables like every other browser.
So how much do I have to pay to boost the Fakespot rating of my product listing?
Does anyone know the split of Amazon’s mobile app versus mobile web and desktop use? This won’t have an impact on their proprietary app and that’s a shame.
i’ve found that firefox on android is one of my favorite apps, even replacing native apps in many cases.
I watch YouTube without ads all through Firefox
Same. I even browse Lemmy in Ff.
i like jerboa for handling any actual conversations i get into, but the search is worthless so i have some custom search engines configured just for lemmy:
https://lemmy.world/search?q=%s&type=All&listingType=All&page=1&sort=New
I’m curious to see what Mozilla will do with the shopping assistant portion. Lots of browser extensions, and potentially even some of the Mozilla sponsors offer these types of features, and if Mozilla just stamps them out all at once by integrating that feature, it might lose them some financial support.
On the other hand, I do hope they don’t start amassing huge amounts of training data from their uses. It would be a real bummer to not have a decent browser option anymore.
I’ve already been using the fakespot extension for a few years, and honestly, it feels pretty useless. I’ve seen it give A and B scores for products that I know have fake reviews. And on Amazon or Walmart and similar sites, we already know that the reviews are bullshit, so what difference does it really make for it to tell me that? It’s not like I have any better option in most cases.
LibreWolf will probably have us covered.
It’s a fork of Firefox without Mozilla telemetry, and defaults set to “privacy on” basically.
I switched a couple months ago and am perfectly happy with it after well over a decade with Firefox.
It is very nice to see Mozilla doing quite useful/helpful projects from time to time.
If there’s anything I’d want built in more than anything it would be vertical tabs like what the existing sideberry extension provides. I also use Vivaldi which has it native, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Edit: and tab manager plus. Same functionality and interface but native.
The existing extensions are fine, but if they are wanting to add things already provided by a third party, those two are my must haves for a modern browsing experience.
In this case, I would check out the Floorp browser. It is a Firefox fork that plans to be more like Vivaldi and have lots of features, including vertical tabs.
Thanks, will do
Amazon’s not “in trouble” because they’re not fake reviews. They’re real reviews left by purchasers, which get bribed to leave them in most cases.
So it’s a real review when someone receives cash to say good things about the product, gotcha.
Stay in context, genius, you know exactly what I mean. Not bot or algorithm can do anything about a review, left by a real customer, with a real acct and purchase history, so yes, it’s “real”. Not being truthful is another thing.
Yeah basically if you want free stuff, then you’re incentivized to leave good reviews so that they are more likely to send you free stuff. Plus, there’s a cognitive bias where you didn’t pay for it so even if you would have been critical you’re more likely to say something positive.
I’ve been using fakespot for a few months now and it seems hit or miss a lot of times. I’m hoping that Mozilla has been making changes to improve the implementation of how it checks reviews.
And so it begins, the marketing world has got its claws in AI.
Might be easier to just disable reviews on Amazon if you’re trying to block fake reviews lol.
I guess this is the approach to how AI can be used effectively.
This is nothing to get excited about. Like so many other things there will be constant innovations on both sides. It’s an arms race between the scammers and the scam detectors.
