Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

> Mozilla couldn't find a sustainable business model for Fakespot despite its popularity

I don't know if it's fair for me to armchair quarterback, but still - what was their business model when they decided to do the acquisition? From the outside looking in barely did anything whatsoever.

I browse Amazon using Firefox extremely often and I don't recall seeing any helper UI pop up. Even so, what would have been their strategy to monetize me? User data? Commissions? Some kind of Mozilla+ subscription?

I love FF and cheer Mozilla on where I can, but honestly these decisions are inscrutable.

They could have slid in their referral link, which would probably make them decent money, but the "ick" factor is pretty high from consumers.

I'm sure there will be a replacement though, and I'm sure they will go hard with referral links.

Mozilla seems infected by corporate board members who probably have conflicts of interest including investments in Amazon, Google, etc.

I can almost assure you, the plan is to run it into the ground,

Why? Can’t imagine any realistic push for this when there’s theoretically much more money to be made by creating a product that people pay to use.

I recall seeing the Mozilla Review Checker pop up on Amazon shortly after I started using it as my daily driver.

I dismissed it quickly because fake reviews is not a problem I have. Maybe I'm not the target market? I do buy a lot on Amazon but can't recall ever thinking I felt burned by fake reviews.

Mozilla seems to be infected by upper management that feels a need to justify ever spiraling salaries.

Mozilla wants to be the "web you can trust" brand, which involves not just shipping a browser but protecting people from the rougher sides of the internet.

It's easier to justify a new thing than it is to make an improvement in an existing thing.

Why do you think VPs love new projects / products so much?

Are they hiring?

Right, why even buy it in the first place? I can't imagine the landscape has changed much, unless the most popular comment here is all the evidence you need...

I think this is the real answer; they've got a vague mission statement, they saw something they wanted to support, opted to buy it, and in classic Mozilla fashion let it squander because the managers in charge moved on.

It's a move straight out of Google's playbook, with the glaring flaw of them not being Google, and their user base likes them for not being Google.

Honestly, Mozilla gives me gnome vibes. They're so caught up believing their own spiel that they don't understand why they keep missing the mark.

I’d guess the idea was about generalizing the team’s efforts to spot fakery across the internet, in-browser. But that horse has left the barn.

Before AI, a lot of search result gamesmanship looked more like bad Amazon reviews. But leading-edge fraud is far past “humans pretending to be real, U.S.-based consumers/posters on a website.” The tools don’t generalize anymore.

I do get the feeling that Mozilla has no idea what their goal is any more. Another one they are like is Yahoo! Just seem to be endlessly trying new things but not really committing to any of the new things one they have them.

Feels like they bought a cool tool, didn't know how to plug it into anything meaningful, and quietly sunset it when it didn’t fit the roadmap

Couldn't agree more. After the founder of the company itself Brendan Eich was fired it only went downhill

Just make it opt in

Rather that taking yet another opportunity to dump on Mozilla (it's easy, I know), I think a better question would be who is the alternative out there doing the work that Fakespot tried to do? Is this telling us that the task is too large for any current solutions to handle?

Just relying on consumer judgement has certainly proven to be inadequate in combating fake reviews, and without incentive, we're not going to get many legitimate reviews.

I don't actually think there was (or needed to be) one...keep in mind they're a non-profit. I think they just wanted to make the internet a safer place, but semi-extraneous (particularly unprofitable) projects sadly need to be cut aggressively with the rising threat of the google antitrust suit, as they may lose most of their income.

Mozilla Corp is a for profit organization owned by a non-profit foundation.

Why is Mozilla, supposedly a subsidiary of a nonprofit with the goal of making the internet better, looking for business models in the first place? They should be looking for donations, sponsors, government grants, etc.

> Mozilla wants to be the "web you can trust" brand, which involves not just shipping a browser but protecting people from the rougher sides of the internet.

And also, apparently, selling your data. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612, and particularly move-on's comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213945.

That doesn't necessarily change the overall mission of the organization, but definitely does give them more flexibility to offer paid options to help sustain development, should they see an opening in the future.

This is more or less taken directly from Thunderbird's website (which I think is a fair comparison): "Thunderbird operates in a separate, for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. This structure gives us the flexibility to offer optional paid services to sustain Thunderbird’s development far into the future."

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-GB/about/

Brendan Eich was fired for opposing gay marriage, then went on to create Brave, which is yet another Chromium wrapper just with bad crypto monetization and other scummy practices.

Couldn't imagine what Mozilla would be like today if he stayed around and tried to integrate crypto. At the end of the day, main post shows Firefox engineering is keeping up with Chrome which is a feat no other browser has accomplished.

Similar feelings about Pocket too. Mozilla seems to be on a cleaning spree

For the record I also dislike the top brass at Mozilla for the same reasons I dislike Eich - trendchasing instead of making a good browser. Firefox is succeeding because of the engineers and despite the c-suite.

> Firefox is succeeding because of the engineers

By what metric is Firefox succeeding?

>Brendan Eich was fired for opposing gay marriage

This gets really tiresome to rebuke. He supported a proposition that was supported by the MAJORITY of the citizens at the time and that was already six years old when we became Mozilla CEO. Some people wrote hit pieces even though he even distanced himself from it. He was not fired, he stepped back voluntarily.