PSA (?): just got this popup in Firefox when i was on an amazon product page. looked into it a bit because it seemed weird and it turns out if you click the big “yes, try it” button, you agree to mandatory binding arbitration with Fakespot and you waive your right to bring a class action lawsuit against them. this is awesome thank you so much mozilla very cool
https://queer.party/@m04/112872517189786676
So, Mozilla adds an AI review features for products you view using Firefox. Other than being very useless, it’s T&C are as anti-consumer as it possibly can be. It’s like mozilla saying directly “we don’t care about your privacy”.
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Why not just be a web browser and leave stuff like this to browser extensions?
Oh right, you enshittified yourself.
You are not wrong. I got curious how much they receive in donations, but could not find anything about it in their financial statements.
That is where I looked and could not find it, albeit only on my short commute from work.
deleted by creator
Average Windows enjoyer
https://www.fakespot.com/privacy-policy
Internet or other electronic network activity (e.g., browsing history, search history, information regarding an individual’s interaction with an internet website, application, or advertisement, and online viewing activities)
Category of Third Parties to Whom Personal Information is Sold and/or Shared: Advertising partners, Service providers
Just a snippet of the privacy policy. There’s other bad stuff too like location tracking. It’s also all ran through Google analytics.
So much for a privacy respecting Mozilla
And people thought Mozilla became an ad company when they bought the other ad company. Nope. I’m tracing it back to right here.
Thanks.
I hope that Ladybirdy gets something good happening. I simply having a another browser in this space would give Mozilla a good sanity check for their direction and values. Otherwise they’re just kind of fumbling around.
There’s Verso now too, a Servo based browser.
How does “waiving your right to a lawsuit” hidden in a terms and conditions apply? I bet it doesn’t
AI shit alone, I never understood the urge to build a whole OS in the browser. I want my browser to view websites. If I want more, then I can install extensions. I’d rather them release this as some sort of “official” extension. Might switch to LibreWolf (do you have any other suggestions?)
Libre wolf for privacy w/ customization, Mullvad for anonymity & blending into the crowd
The real reason people want to revoke the second amendment is so Mozilla will stop constantly pointing guns at their own feet.
This is such a clever comment and I am upset about it
Seems like you can press the not now button
Not a big deal…
I consider it a big deal. I’m clicking “Not Now” buttons all day when I just want to use a piece of software for its main purpose. And then because it says “Not Now” I get asked again and again and again.
didn’t the Firefox management say they would focus on their core product rather than random little services like this
Yeah but to be fair they bought this years ago. Just took them forever to integrated. I suspect any changes in direction will truly show in 3-4 years, once the current backlog (no don’t look at my company’s Jira, TYVM! 😑 ) is cleared.
Actually I thought there new ceo said they were going to fuck around with AI stuff.
Edit:
At this point, I’m glad I switched to Mull on my phone. It took a bit of overcoming the resistance of using Firefox for decades (Stockholm syndrome), but I don’t miss Firefox one bit.
Now I need to do that on my desktop, but I’m still shopping. Librewolf? Palemoon? Ice Weasel? What are folks here trying out these days?
Lots of love for librewolf here.
Strong fingerprint resistance breaks a lot of sites so just get used to disabling that on whatever sites.
Isn’t Mull basicslly Firefox since it’s just a Firefox-based fork? The UI seems to be identical to me - don’t notice any other differences on my phone
Isn’t Mull basicslly Firefox since it’s just a Firefox-based fork?
I don’t understand why that would be a bad thing. If Firefox starts to enshittify then a fork from before the enshittification is exactly what I want.
It’s not - quite the contrary. I was just wondering what the commenter that I replied to meant when they said that it took them some getting used to. For me, it’s just a slight change in design and a different icon
Yes, it’s Firefox without the bullshit.
It’s ironic that Firefox started the same way, actually.
When Netscape open sourced its browser and then fucked it up, some folks took the source code and built “Phoenix,” much, much later becoming Firefox.
On Android I am using Waterfox. Still looking for alternatives on desktop.
Mullvad Browser is pretty good on desktop.
i did not get a pop up on a amazon page maybe a us only thing idk but its ironic how firefox advertises Privacy related feature
Yeah I’m thinking this might be a nightly experiment/recommended extension?
I’m in the US and don’t see it, so I don’t think it’s a thing, at least on the stable channel.
FakeSpot is a hilarious company run by trend chasers, “crypto enthusiasts and web3 believers.”
If Mozilla chasing the AI trend isn’t bad enough, and their privacy policy doesn’t hurt your soul, FakeSpot also only works on the biggest and most predatory platforms (Walmart and Amazon).
I puked a little when I read both names in the screenshot OP posted.
FakeSpot also only works on the biggest and most predatory platforms (Walmart and Amazon).
that also happen to be by far the most popular, and also where you are the mos likely to see fake reviews
“If the privacy invasion and corporate trend chasing doesn’t hurt your soul”?
Did you miss the privacy invasion where Mozilla now sells private data to advertising companies directly?
all the data that goes through the firefox integration is anonymised
anonymization is not a silver bullet. Data gets deanonymized all the time. It’s very easy to accidentally leak useful information
We are talking about Mozilla FakeSpot, not Mozilla PPA…
I know, there’s so many privacy issues right now that it’s hard to keep track.
i am talking about fakespot
The letters “anon” don’t appear anywhere in the privacy policy.
So where are you pulling this claim from, because it doesn’t smell right…
Mozilla claims the service respects your privacy because they are using OHTTP (which does NOT provide anonymity)… The marketing speak implies anonymity heavily, but doesn’t say it
they seem to be basically saying that they make most of their profit by selling your private data to advertisers, trend calculators etc etc
Cool it with the universal AI hate. There are many kinds of AI, detecting fake reviews is a totally reasonable and useful case.
I have large doubts on an AIs ability to reliably spot fakes.
AI: “This is definitely a fake review because I wrote it.”
There are literal bots on Reddit with less complexity able to measure the likelihood of a story being reliable and truthful, with facts and fact checkers. They’re not always right, they ARE useful though. Or were. Not sure about now, been over a year since I left.
Would you mind pointing me in the direction of those AIs since the newfangled factcheck bot seems to just pull its data from a premade database, so no AI here on Lemmy
but it does not work. This stuff never does.
What do you mean by “this stuff?” Machine learning models are a fundamental part of spam prevention, have been for years. The concept is just flipping it around for use by the individual, not the platform.
I’m starting to worry about Mozilla. Firefox is still the best browser, and I’ve used it for many years… but there are more and more anti-features popping up that require a few settings to be changed. No one thing is a big deal, but I’m starting to feel the same way about Firefox as I did about Windows before I stopped using it: like it’s just trying to trick me into doing something I don’t want to do rather than aiming to be a good product.
I’m thinking specifically about the address bar getting ‘search suggestions’ from Google by default; and the special ‘ad effectiveness tracking’ that is turned on by default to help Facebook. Privacy should always be the default setting. We shouldn’t have to keep up-to-date with the latest features and settings just so that we know what to disable!
Firefox is gone for me. Too long with minor issues hanging around while they focus on the issues above.
Let me browse, bookmark, and thats pretty much it. Allowing me to save passwords okay fine but all that other stuff just no way
I actually use fakespot a lot, but will never install an add-on for this.
I got that notice a few months ago, but I didn’t use either button on the bottom. I used the X on the top, and haven’t seen it since.
<rant>I thought we were done with the age of Toolbars, but here we are, back there. An app or add-on for every damn thing. No, I don’t want this integrated into my browser. No, I don’t need your HTML5 app on my phone to do less than the webpage does. No, I don’t want your spyware app to view the one-off Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram link a friend sends me. No, I don’t mean ‘maybe later’, I mean ‘no forever’.</rant>
but here we are, back there.
The upside is that if you’re ever prompted to install a thing to your browser to use a site’s features, it’s because the built-in sandbox is too restrictive for what they want. It’s an immediate red flag.
I also view prompts to “use our (phone) app” the same way. I’m already seeing your site, in my browser, with ten different kinds of adblock and tampermonkey scripts running. I already have what I want, and I’m not letting you anywhere near my data plan.
Clearly, it’s time for a “no means no” extension.
But the thing is, most people don’t think twice about it, and just go, “meh, why not, what’s the harm?” and install it, which tells those scummy summersons that “we” want this, and they keep pushing it, and making their site more and more useless without it, to the point, where ‘desktop view’ no longer works (I’m looking at you, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, to name a few).
Its getting to the point where its affecting services I use in the real world like ordering food. Having to explain why I’m not using an app and being upset the website doesnt work will definitely have customer service people who dont understand the implications of the system theyre promoting rolling their eyes at me for making their lives harder
I never explain exactly why. I skirt. “my phone isn’t compatible with your app”, “I don’t have a modern smartphone that works with your app”, “I don’t install apps on my phone”, “I don’t have space on my phone for your app”, “I only a work phone, and I’m not allowed to install anything”, and so on. They don’t care about your privacy, so don’t give it as a reason. “it’s not about privacy, I’m just poor”.
