{"id":48317,"date":"2025-07-02T16:17:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T20:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=48317"},"modified":"2025-07-02T16:17:45","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T20:17:45","slug":"fakespot-shuts-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/02\/fakespot-shuts-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Fakespot Shuts Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.truestar.pro\/fakespot-shuts-down\/\">Bryson Thill<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=44437712\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/blog.truestar.pro\/fakespot-shuts-down\/\"><p>Fakespot&rsquo;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 <a href=\"https:\/\/getcircuit.com\/route-planner\/blog\/amazon-fake-review-analysis?ref=blog.truestar.pro\">study by app company Circuit<\/a>. The problem was even worse in certain categories. Clothing and jewelry led the pack with a staggering 88% of reviews deemed unreliable.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>As Fakespot gained traction, investors took notice. In November 2020, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2020\/11\/30\/cyber-monday-scams-fakespot-says-its-tech-can-spot-fraudulent-reviews-and-sellers-online\/?ref=blog.truestar.pro\">the company raised $4 million in Series A funding<\/a>, bringing their total funding to $7 million and signaling strong confidence in their mission to combat fake reviews.<\/p><p>Three years later, <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/en\/mozilla\/fakespot-joins-mozilla-firefox-shopping-announcement\/?ref=blog.truestar.pro\">Mozilla acquired Fakespot<\/a>, bringing the startup&rsquo;s 13-person team into the Firefox family. Mozilla integrated Fakespot&rsquo;s technology directly into Firefox as the &ldquo;Mozilla Review Checker&rdquo; feature, making it easier than ever for users to verify product reviews without installing separate extensions.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Mozilla couldn&rsquo;t find a sustainable business model for Fakespot despite its popularity, choosing to redirect resources to core Firefox features and AI-powered browser tools.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/22\/shutting-down-pocket\/\">Shutting Down Pocket<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/03\/paid-amazon-reviews\/\">Paid Amazon Reviews<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/06\/fakespot-for-amazon-and-yelp-reviews\/\">Fakespot for Amazon and Yelp Reviews<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/16\/spotting-fake-amazon-reviews\/\">Spotting Fake Amazon Reviews<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bryson Thill (via Hacker News): Fakespot&rsquo;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.[&#8230;]As [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-07-02T20:17:47Z","apple_news_api_id":"b7c2d823-08fd-4e27-96c1-a76bdf9be082","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-07-02T20:17:47Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/At8LYIwj9TieWwadr35vggg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[19,101,890,1436,279,295,410,509,1451,1519,96],"class_list":["post-48317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-amazon","tag-business","tag-ebay","tag-fakespot","tag-firefox","tag-history","tag-mozilla","tag-shopping","tag-sunset","tag-walmart","tag-web"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48318,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48317\/revisions\/48318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}