Mozilla acquires fake review identification tool
Fakespot, a web extension that can be used to check the reliability of online reviews and identify fakes online, has been acquired by Firefox developer Mozilla.
Mozilla and Fakespot released statements on 2 May confirming the acquisition.
Fakespot uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to alert users of scams and falsified reviews online. The tool detects patterns and similarities between reviews to flag those that are most likely to be false.
The tool aims to provide users with a more secure online shopping experience.
Commerce has been at the core of how people use the Internet and has resulted in “unprecedented economies of scale” in the digital marketplace, Mozilla said.
“This global ecommerce scale-up has also created new challenges for consumers, such as how to make decisions like where to shop, which products to buy for a given need, and which vendor within a store to buy from.”
User reviews have emerged as a valuable resource for online shoppers to assess an online service’s reliability and quality.
In the best-case scenario, these reviews provide a way to quickly determine if a product, service, or company is good. But the resource can also be a tool for deception if reviews are deliberately manipulated.
Fakespot aims to identify deceptive reviews to prevent online shoppers from being ripped off while shopping online.
It can provide secure shopping services on Amazon, Ebay, BestBuy, Sephora, Shopify, and Walmart.
Fakespot extensions on other browsers and mobile apps will still be supported despite the acquisition by Mozilla.
Fakespot reviews
MyBroadband decided to look at online reviews for Fakespot on Trustpilot to get a sense of how well the tool performs.
Fakespot was rated 115 times on the platform with an average rating of 1.9 stars out of 5. 68% of reviewers gave the browser extension a 1-star rating.
In January this year, a user called Sally Monk gave Fakespot a 1-star review as she said reviews for a “responsible business” that she had bought from multiple times was being flagged as being a “scam” or having a “fake tracking number”.
She wrote to Fakespot about this and said she hadn’t received a response when her comment was posted.
Another user calling herself Annette Barsby said a business they were looking at with exclusively positive reviews was given a Fakespot warning. Barsby claims they would ignore the tool when shopping on E-bay and independently assess the reliability of comments.
Barsby gave the tool a 2-star rating and said, “I can’t trust this is a good thing to rely on at all”.
An Amazon and Etsy seller, LeAnn Kurtz, said she knows her four and five-star reviews are from “legit” verified buyers. However, her ratings are flagged as F’s and D’s by Fakespot, suggesting they are unreliable.
“Don’t trust it…ever,” she said.
Joe, who left a review on 1 April 2023, disagreed with the majority view about the service’s trustworthiness. They said many “upset sellers” were reviewing the tool after being “found out for paying people to review their products with 5 star reviews”.
Joe gave Fakespot a 5-star review and said that a verified purchase does not mean an individual was not paid to leave the favourable comment.
“I trust Fakespot to do the hard work for me,” said Joe.
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