Fakespot Shuts Down
Bryson Thill (via Hacker News):
Fakespot’s technology revealed some eye-opening statistics. About 43% of the best-selling Amazon products had reviews that were unreliable or fabricated, according to a study by app company Circuit. The problem was even worse in certain categories. Clothing and jewelry led the pack with a staggering 88% of reviews deemed unreliable.
[…]
As Fakespot gained traction, investors took notice. In November 2020, the company raised $4 million in Series A funding, bringing their total funding to $7 million and signaling strong confidence in their mission to combat fake reviews.
Three years later, Mozilla acquired Fakespot, bringing the startup’s 13-person team into the Firefox family. Mozilla integrated Fakespot’s technology directly into Firefox as the “Mozilla Review Checker” feature, making it easier than ever for users to verify product reviews without installing separate extensions.
[…]
Mozilla couldn’t find a sustainable business model for Fakespot despite its popularity, choosing to redirect resources to core Firefox features and AI-powered browser tools.
Previously:
- Shutting Down Pocket
- Paid Amazon Reviews
- Fakespot for Amazon and Yelp Reviews
- Spotting Fake Amazon Reviews
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To paraphrase another famous quote, “AI: the cause of, and solution to, all our problems!”
The fake reviews always stood out to me because real people don’t write that way unless they’re paid to. Nobody actually hits the company keywords in a product review. They usually don’t even use proper punctuation or full words.
But of course now AI can just be tasked with writing the reviews in a variety of styles, and also tasked with reviewing the fakes.
What even is, like, real man?
I know this isn’t strictly a post about AI but that’s what I read it as. No surprise Mozilla couldn’t find a business model. What is it they’re supposed to be doing again? Something about a browser? They don’t seem to quite know anymore.
