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