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”.

  • Read bio@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    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

  • Lad@reddthat.com
    0·
    2 months ago

    I’m not opposed to the tool itself but they can fuck off with pushing it onto us. If I want to see the newest Firefox features I’ll go the main site and find them.

      • kbal@fedia.io
        0·
        2 months ago

        You’re saying that no remotely normal person would ever bother to download Fakespot free of charge if it wasn’t pushed at them through obnoxious in-browser advertising? And how much did Mozilla pay for this thing?

          • kbal@fedia.io
            0·
            2 months ago

            No? What was your justification for building big and intrusive ads for Fakespot into Firefox then, if not that nobody would otherwise bother to go looking for it?

            • Blisterexe@lemmy.zip
              0·
              2 months ago

              My mom would love that feature, and she wouldnt go looking for it.

              Also that popup only appears when you click a tiny “shopping tag” icon in the adress bar, and THAT icon only appears on supported websites

              • kbal@fedia.io
                0·
                2 months ago

                Ah well, that’s not so bad as I feared (as an esr and librewolf user I won’t be seeing it for a while) but not so good as it might be. A little notification icon that appears when there’s an update to inform people of such things is traditional and makes more sense to me.

                Showing it instead when you visit a particular site unfortunately reminds people likely to be unhappy about it that their web browser now contains features designed specifically for the benefit of a small list of supported web sites.

  • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    2 months ago

    I’ve used Firefox since it was released. I will be considering other browsers due to this. I do not want AI in my products.

      • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        2 months ago

        Different priorities for different people. The AI is what I really have an issue with right now. I’m sick of it being shoved down everyone’s throats, and I have big ethical concerns about it in general.

      • TomMasz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Floorp

        Thanks, these look interesting. I’ve been using Firefox forever for my personal browsing (but Edge for work) and I’d prefer to stay with it if I can.

      • puppy@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        Since Firefox is free and open source, there are many other variations of it built and distributed by the community.

  • antler@feddit.rocks
    0·
    1 month ago

    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

    • LWD@lemm.ee
      0·
      1 month ago

      And people thought Mozilla became an ad company when they bought the other ad company. Nope. I’m tracing it back to right here.

  • Napain@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    didn’t the Firefox management say they would focus on their core product rather than random little services like this

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      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.

    • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      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?

      • Firestorm Druid@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        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

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
          0·
          2 months ago

          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.

          • Firestorm Druid@lemmy.zipEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            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

        • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 months ago

          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.

  • ArchRecord@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 months ago

    I was happy when they used an entirely on-device AI to generate alt text for photos, but this is just ridiculous. They quite literally already have an extension that does the exact same thing this new “feature” offers.

    Firefox was supposed to be a less bloated than chrome, but all they’ve done now is continued to add more and more to the browser that nobody actually asked for.

    Give me bug fixes, UX and performance improvements, not entire sidebar popups for review checking that only works on 3 stores on the entire internet.

  • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • Xenny@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    How does “waiving your right to a lawsuit” hidden in a terms and conditions apply? I bet it doesn’t

    • xcjs@programming.dev
      0·
      2 months ago

      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.

  • ZeroHora@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Fakespot is from Mozilla, if you trust Mozilla, why don’t you trust Fakespot?

    And why is it useless? With the amount of fake AI reviews an AI to detect them is not completely useless.

    But the popup is annoying.

    • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      And why is it useless?

      It’s not useless. It’s just that it’s bloatware that’s unnecessary for many.

      Like a car with a bright orange “Order Bird Food” button in the middle of the dashboard. If you don’t own any birds, then it sucks.

      • ZeroHora@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Nothing new in the helm of browsers. Pockets is a extension baked into the browser.

        Many browsers have VPN/Ad Block native to the browser. Opera GX have all that bullshit that surprising can deceive a lot of normies to use it.

        Sadly this type of bloat sells as “features” to some people and Mozilla gains users with it. Btw I’m not defending this practice I just seeing for what it is, marketing.

        • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 months ago

          Sure, sure, other browsers do it. But I expected more of Mozilla.

          Pocket was already bad enough, but it was kiiiiinda related to browsing anyway - it was a glorified bookmarking tool. It had a nice purpose too - save pages for online reading - but they seem to have gotten rid of that and I’m mad about it.

    • lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Using AI to detect AI is completely useless. It’s been a big issue in academics, where a professor will plug your essay into an AI detector and then you get dinged for plagiarism because your entirely handwritten essay gets marked as AI. It’s just glorified pattern matching, it has no concept of real or fake.

      • Laurentide@pawb.socialEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        If the AI could really detect any discrepancies between human and AI-generated text, it would stop making them.

    • LWD@lemm.ee
      0·
      2 months ago

      I trust Mozilla to do what they promise with my private data

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      People shouldn’t trust Mozilla either. It’s a company that does company things. Just because it’s not as far-gone as Google doesn’t mean it’s incapable.

      • ZeroHora@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I never said they should trust. But if they trust Mozilla with the telemetry/pockets/whatever they put on the browser this one is just like the others.

      • sudo@lemmy.today
        0·
        2 months ago

        just because its not as far-gone as Google

        The fact that the Mozilla Foundation is non-profit, despite wherever controversy there may be around their decisions of late, is a pretty significant factor.

        • LWD@lemm.ee
          0·
          2 months ago

          Mozilla Foundation has no members, it’s operated by the for-profit Corporation, and the Corporation is powered by its profit motive.

          • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            Even worse, the majority of its revenue comes from Google for making it the default search engine.