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406 points doppio19 | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.406s | source
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pogue ◴[] No.44439038[source]
I did search around looking for alternatives and the landscape isn't great. There's ReviewMeta.com which doesn't work 100% of the time and is no longer actively maintained as far as I can tell.

TheReviewIndex.com I didn't find to be very helpful, as it doesn't index all products and sometimes just refuses to check on listings you ask it to. It seems to have some kind of subscription model, but they don't list the price and offer some kind of enterprise model that doesn't sound like it has anything to do with checking reviews.

SearchBestSellers.com isn't for checking individual products, but it will show you the top sellers for each category so you can get an idea of what could be good in the category you're looking for

Camelcamelcamel.com is a price watch tool that will also show you some historical info on a product & notify you if you sign up and want to be emailed when a price drop occurs

There are a few others on AlternativeTo that weren't there the last time I checked. https://alternativeto.net/software/fakespot/

On Reddit, some people were mentioning alternatives, including asking ChatGPT about the product and it might have some kinda helpful advice, but nothing like Fakespot offered. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1ktm4g4/now_that_f...

If you use something else, have found a good alternative or a particular prompt you've tried in your favorite LLM to get info on an Amazon product, let us know!

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doppio19 ◴[] No.44439104[source]
I mentioned it briefly in the blog post, but this is exactly what I'm working on! Essentially, a spiritual successor to Fakespot that combines LLM analysis, more traditional ML techniques, and rule-based heuristics to detect fake reviews. I'll likely go the "subscription with generous free trial" route, to avoid meeting the same fate as Fakespot.

I'm actively working on a prototype and have a landing page at https://www.truestar.pro if you want to get notified about when I launch.

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pogue ◴[] No.44439707[source]
I saw that actually. I mentioned in another post on here recently that I figured that the only way a Fakespot v2 could exist is with a subscription model, but on the other hand, it's probably not something I could afford. Good luck with it though! You could always try advertising & affiliate links as a test to monetize the service as well.
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1. doppio19 ◴[] No.44439835[source]
Thanks! Advertising is certainly a possibility, though I'm not sure using affiliate links in the browser extension itself will be an option. I know Google recently changed their policy on how browser extensions can manipulate affiliate links after the Honey scandal: https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/23/24328268/honey-coupon-co...
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2. pogue ◴[] No.44439932[source]
Yeah, probably not in the extension itself. But, Fakespot, on their web based reviews, had listings to alternative or better rated products than the one you were searching for. Possibly a bit of a conflict, but as far as I'm aware, it's the only way Fakespot was monetized.