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The experimental feature was initially spotted by MSPowerUser, and Firefox’s senior director of product management Byron Jourdan confirmed that the company is testing the functionality “with a limited audience in the United States,” in a statement given to The Verge.
Fake reviews are a big problem for online retailers, which have had to take increasingly aggressive measures to stop malicious actors from using them to boost the ratings of their products.
Screenshots posted by MSPowerUser show how the tool is accessible via a price tag icon in the browser’s URL bar, which brings up a sidebar with details on the current open product page.
The Review Checker feature is powered by technology from Fakespot, a company Mozilla acquired earlier this year.
The company “uses a sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) system to detect patterns and similarities between reviews in order to flag those that are most likely to be deceptive,” Mozilla said when it announced the acquisition, noting that it planned to integrate the technology into its browser to “make Firefox customers the best equipped to cut through deceptive reviews.”
Fakespot already offers its review checking services via its website, extensions for browsers like Chrome and Safari, and iOS and Android apps.
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Seems Interesting. I hope this will also be a local feature and not dependent on a cloud service but since the Company behind this is using some AI and ML I doubt that it will run on the computer especially since firefox is known to run on basically anything
With Firefox’ recent addition of “offline” translations I wouldn’t rule out that they’ll run this locally as well.
Not sure whether that’s a more complex model though.
I know about that, and I love that it runs locally. I just hope that they will keep this mindset, I would love to have such tool available at all times Edit: Personally I also agree its a bit weird that it will be a native feature, maybe an official extension would be more adequate
I love Firefox.
I tried Opera on a few of my devices lately and frankly I’m impressed by the responsiveness. I still can’t get rid of Firefox but I find myself moving over to Opera more and morem
Out of curiosity, why are you trying to get rid of Firefox?
I dumped Chrome to switch to Firefox a few months ago and haven’t really had any problems with it. I miss tab groups on mobile, but that’s about it.
Firefox doesn’t have native HEVC support. So I switched to Opera because no other browser except for Safari has that feature.
Supposedly Edge has it, but couldn’t get it to work on my media server app.
What do you use HEVC support for?
Its a very simple low ressource video server utility that I’m using for easy access at work.
Its basically a stupid low footprint plex-like local web server that uses the browser’s internal HEVC support to play and cast to my TV.
Oh that’s sick, what is it??
Its an in house utility… But I would assume something similar already exists out there
Best browser, even though that goes without saying when the competitor is Chrome.
Omg just be a browser please. Desktop PWAs are still not a feature in Firefox. Search input elements still don’t have a native “clear” button. Hardware acceleration on Linux is only like a year old feature. Etc.
I love you Firefox, but you’re losing focus. If I wanted built-in gimmicks I’d use Edge (okay probably not but you get the idea)
Do you need a clear button when you can just ctrl+A?
PWAs are available on mobile, where it makes the most sense from the user perspective.
If you want this functionality on the desktop, there’s a tool for that as well.
Thanks!
Also there’s extensions. This kind of thing seems like it should be an extension.
I’d argue that fact checking can be more important today than anything that you’ve mentioned. Modern problems require modern solutions and it’s natural that browsers extend their feature sets. I’d agree with you had they announced that they were planning to merge Firefox and Thunderbird.
Bloat goes in extensions.
I think it would be fine as an official extension. Shipping it built-in feels weird to me.
Each step reduces the amount of users who could use the feature. If they think this feature is important, it makes sense to include it with the browser.
I agree that fact checking is important, but disagree it should be a core function of a web browser.
PWAs are bloat. I want a browser to do webpages not turn webpages into apps.
PWAs are great. Half the apps in app stores are just packaged browsers, we should take away the need for that bloat…using the engine of your choice would be a bonus. Plus they create the option of skipping app stores entirely, which is another step away from the Google/Apple oligopoly.
I’d rather use a PWA that uses my firefox install than use an electron app which bundles chromium. And PWAs are standard, and can work on mobile too…
To be fair, apps that use electron are rubbish too :)
They are, but PWAs are slightly less
When the options are “install” as a PWA or download a bloated Electron app, I’m going with the PWA. Every time. :shrug: It would just be nice to be able to do that in FF without any kind of 3rd party helpers.
Build a checker for AI-generated content too please!
Unfortunately, no one’s yet succeeded in making a workable checker (AI-written text and the writing of English-as-foreign-language speakers are awkwardly similar along many axes, apparently, so existing checkers have a lot of false positives).
That is already done, as a way to improve AI, in a technique called Generative Adversarial Neural Networks (GANN).
One network’s task is to produce fake content. The other network’s task is to detect it. These networks then evolve together, each getting better and better.
What that means is that if we develop a means to detect AI-generated content, then that mechanism becomes the stepping stone to better AI.
So who are they sending our product browsing data to in order to provide this service? At least I know what Microsoft and Google are doing with my data (nothing good). But Pocket and cloudflare and there VPN provider and whatever other random companies Firefox partners with? Who knows! How do I opt out? Who knows! How secure are these companies? Who knows! At least using Edge or Chrome I only have to hand over my data to one evil corporation, instead of several. Plus I actually get things I want in return (for me: automatic image descriptions, reader mode, read aloud, and AI based page summaries). Nothing I get from the companies Firefox works with are things I even want.
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That’s what worries me. When companies get desperate for cash, they tend to do pretty terrible things.
Nice! Can we get one that checks for overinflated online prices by the e-commerce site?
I installed the Fakespot extension and then went looking through my past purchases. It seemed to work really well and called out things as shady for products that I can say, first hand, were actually kind of sketchy.
