- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Can we please stop with the browser bloat? This is something that should be a plug-in, not a kitchen sink feature.
Agreed. This is well outside the scope of native browser functions. Firefox already has a rich extensions ecosystem. They can just include the extension with the browser by default for all I care, but as a native feature, this makes no sense.
Firefox extension platform frontend is a mess and has been for years.
I’d say these should be “recommended plug-ins” but imho FF/Moz embarassed themselves on that front with the whole “Pocket” thing.
I agree and I worry about what options they’ll remove from about:config next to make room for or force the acceptance of new features like they have a habit of doing.
There’s LibreWolf. It allows you to disable many things that you can’t disable in normal Firefox. It also has uBlock Origin pre-installed and it’s pre-configured for privacy.
+1. When Edge added a price tracker / financing thing, the same people threw a fit.
If you were pro that, you should be pro this.
Just use LibreWolf if you want debloated Firefox
Librewolf isn’t just a debloated version of Firefox. It’s built with a completely different goal of being extra locked down for privacy. More so than the defaults of Firefox. Also, it doesn’t even include auto update functionality unless you’re using a package manager.
It’s built with a completely different goal of being extra locked down for privacy. More so than the defaults of Firefox.
That’s good, isn’t it?
Also, it doesn’t even include auto update functionality
I completely forgot this was even as thing because I exclusively use Linux and install/update everything with a package manager. You can also use Chocolatey on Windows or Homebrew on macOS. I feel like more people should use package managers, by using them you avoid having to download some random executables from shady websites and your system doesn’t get bloated up by 423942389 update daemons that are constantly running in the background.
That’s good, isn’t it?
It is, but it’s also not for everyone
Also, I strongly don’t expect everyday users to use package managers. And personally, I like having notifications in the app whenever it’s time to update so I can take action right there.
It is, but it’s also not for everyone
Why? Pretty much every website works fine on LibreWolf.
I like having notifications in the app whenever it’s time to update
I mean, yeah, sure, it would be great if LibreWolf had an auto-update functionality, for me it’s not a deal breaker though.
Amazon only operates in 58 countries, so it’s basically useless for everyone else. But the company they acquired (fakespot) seems to do more than amazon, but that still does not make it worth packaging it with the browser
I bought an 4.7 rated amplifier on Amazon that broke the first day. Looking at the reviews closer, I noticed they were 100% paid reviewers.
When I tried to leave a negative review, Amazon stopped me, giving a generic message about fake reviews on this product. This product is still out their with a high rating and no way for actual purchasers like me to warn other customers.
deleted by creator
I’ve gotten into the habit of never buying anything from Amazon
FTFY. I don’t even have an account there.
I only use it for 2 dollar Amazon prime video + gaming sub that I got when Apple App Store glitched.
How do these analyzers determine if a review is fake?
It’s some ML/AI thing that analyzes the review content.
I honestly have no idea how accurate it is either, but I guess if it gives a strong ranking back you’d probably be best to take that into consideration.
deleted by creator
That’s appalling customer service.
Amazon stopped me, giving a generic message about fake reviews on this product
Can you elaborate? I’ve never experienced this and would like to understand how they do it.
I’ve had this multiple times.
Tried to leave a big detailed helpful negative review and it gets flagged for being suspicious, with no copy of the review attached so I have to write it all again. And then it gets removed again.
I just looked in my emails. The exact phrasing was “We have reviewed our decisions and concluded that the product you received is authentic. As a result, we removed your review specific to this product. This ensures other customers see reviews that reflect the current shopping experience.”
Most recently it happened with a body trimmer, where I never questioned the inauthenticity, and then a zojirushi travel mug that I genuinely believe was a fake, and attached a lot of evidence.
Give it 2 stars instead of 1.
And never read the 5-star reviews.
Amazing. Thanks for the description.
They’ve blocked my review on a shower chair that was absolutely not rated for what they said. I nearly fell on my butt and my skinnier partner said it was too wobbly. They’ve blocked the negative review 5 times saying I questioned the authenticity of the product and they have confirmed it. I knew it was Medline brand. I’ve had to file a FTC complaint which I expect to be worthless.
Do you mean Vine? I can tell you a few things about that.
Yep vines, never paid attention to them until this happened.
Are they all fake or something?
Customers who were sent free products “to honesty review”
I just want native vertical tabs lmao
I’ve been using Sidebery with some userchrome to hide the top tabs, and it’s a workable solution, but far from ideal.
I also wish keybindings were configurable. For example, with the “/” search, ctrl-g/G to go to next/prev match is really weird
Tried Sidebery too with some basic hidden UI CSS but having to keep it up to date makes it clunky at times, leagues away from Edges implementation where it’s just a toggle away.
what’s a vertical tab
Where the tabs are on the side of the desktop screen instead of the top.
And i just want a tab bar on Android tablets/foldables like every other browser.
This will work for 15 microseconds before people start deploying it as an adversarial training aid.
Came here to say this.
Guess it’ll have to be a live service that is constantly running and updating what a wonderful world
The dedicated websites to check amazon reviews like fakespot.com have been almost completely beaten. What is Firefox going to do differently?
Per the article, they are integrating Fakespot into Firefox, so it won’t be different. Hopefully the tool can be improved
Yeah. Fakespot is no better at all. The best thing to do right now is know if a product has only been listed for less than a couple months and has hundreds of reviews, it’s BS.
Next up; go to the review section, sort by newest, and read those reviews. Usually the fake reviews are flooded in early and you get more real ones in later. I’ve seen things rated at like 4.5 stars with 500 reviews, but then half of the 10 most recent reviews will rate it 1 star.
Yeah it doesn’t seem too difficult to me to see when reviews seem fishy. I have never tried fakespot myself.
Another thing to check is that the reviews match what the product is for - I have seen a lot of Amazon listings where the seller will have a product up for a long time, get a lot of positive reviews, then change the listing to something else. So it looks like the listing has been up for a long time with good reviews but it’s really a different item. Then note the seller and don’t buy anything from them lol.
I have a Firefox extension from this website, and another one… So I’ve had this all along. I guess it’s great to hear they are building something into the product itself, though.
I’d really prefer it stay as an extension, honestly. The whole of the userbase does not need this and I hate software bloat.
Given the amount of malicious extensions that have slips through the cracks over the years, I’d rather it baked in. Something like that is very much inline with what Mozilla is all about in the end. Useful features that many would want isn’t bloat.
It is very nice to see Mozilla doing quite useful/helpful projects from time to time.
Removed by mod
The article is about a feature they’ve brought to their Firefox
I’m curious to see what Mozilla will do with the shopping assistant portion. Lots of browser extensions, and potentially even some of the Mozilla sponsors offer these types of features, and if Mozilla just stamps them out all at once by integrating that feature, it might lose them some financial support.
On the other hand, I do hope they don’t start amassing huge amounts of training data from their uses. It would be a real bummer to not have a decent browser option anymore.
I’ve already been using the fakespot extension for a few years, and honestly, it feels pretty useless. I’ve seen it give A and B scores for products that I know have fake reviews. And on Amazon or Walmart and similar sites, we already know that the reviews are bullshit, so what difference does it really make for it to tell me that? It’s not like I have any better option in most cases.
Eh, Fakespot has been decent enough for me. I think it works best when there are a lot of reviews, it’s not very helpful when it’s like 5-10 reviews on a product.
deleted by creator
LibreWolf will probably have us covered.
It’s a fork of Firefox without Mozilla telemetry, and defaults set to “privacy on” basically.
I switched a couple months ago and am perfectly happy with it after well over a decade with Firefox.
I must admit that I do like the built in page translation, which I guess was made by a similar team using ML and all. Maybe I will like this too? Feels a bit… niche. Maybe it’s a stepping stone to any misinformation at some point?
Edit This actually might not be coming as a browser feature at all. Mozilla is trying to increase the size of their Mozilla.ai team, so perhaps it’s really looking for people with AI knowledge with web tech and a track record of using it for a ethical purpose. This team would be well placed to build pretty much any AI based tool for the firefox ecosystem.
We’re switching to Firefox!
Just did it.
firefox hitting homeruns on user-friendliness with actually useful features that protect you online, while all other browser just wanna put more ads in front of your face.
Always sort by 1 star. And if the comments share similar issues. Do not buy.
No… 2 to 4 star reviews are more realistic. 5 star reviews are either fake or they got lucky and nothing bad happened. 1 star reviews usually are from people that were PISSED OFF while 2 to 4 star reviews are generally from people with more nuanced opinions than “this product cured my cancer” or “this product set fire to my cat and stole my significant other”
And so it begins, the marketing world has got its claws in AI.
I mean, Fakespot already does the same thing. They rate the product based on the quality of reviews (whether or not they’re fake).
Yeah sorry, I wasn’t aware the AI wars already spread into marketing-land
It’s not even just AI. It’s also real people being paid to leave fake reviews.
Plenty of fake reviews are AI written now too. For a while you could go on any product page and Ctrl+F for “as a large language model” and spot several copy/pasted reviews with no proofreading that out themselves
Does anyone know the split of Amazon’s mobile app versus mobile web and desktop use? This won’t have an impact on their proprietary app and that’s a shame.
i’ve found that firefox on android is one of my favorite apps, even replacing native apps in many cases.
I watch YouTube without ads all through Firefox
You should look into Revanced.
I also entirely watch YouTube through Firefox. I’ve had no need to consider a different app for YouTube because of it
Same. I even browse Lemmy in Ff.
i like jerboa for handling any actual conversations i get into, but the search is worthless so i have some custom search engines configured just for lemmy:
https://lemmy.world/search?q=%s&type=All&listingType=All&page=1&sort=New
The question you’re responding to isn’t about the mobile app for Firefox; it’s about the mobile app for Amazon. Apparently lots of other people misread that too, so at least you’re in good company.
i know it’s about the mobile app for amazon. i’m trying to suggest that people who use firefox are more likely to skip the amazon app anyway.
deleted by creator
In this case, I would check out the Floorp browser. It is a Firefox fork that plans to be more like Vivaldi and have lots of features, including vertical tabs.
deleted by creator
How are vertical tabs better than horizontal ones?
Cause after I have 60 tabs open I can still tell what they are cause I can read the title, not just see the fav icon.
Praise Vivaldi
deleted by creator
I’ve been using fakespot for a few months now and it seems hit or miss a lot of times. I’m hoping that Mozilla has been making changes to improve the implementation of how it checks reviews.