Introducing “More to consider” product recommendations in Review Checker for Firefox

[Jon]

Introducing “More to consider” product recommendations in Review Checker for Firefox - learn more and share your feedback

Hi folks,

Over the last year, you may have seen us working on Review Checker in Firefox, a feature that helps you know whether reviews are reliable when you shop online with Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, and Walmart.com. This opt-in feature assesses the quality of product reviews by helping you know whether the reviews are likely from real customers, or from biased or paid reviewers.

When it comes to advertising, we’re committed to being more transparent and giving you more control. Today we are introducing “More to consider” in Review Checker - a module that displays highly-rated and relevant product recommendations, some of which will be sponsored if you are located in the US. Sponsored product recommendations will be clearly marked as “Sponsored”. Our goal is to make the products that appear in this module helpful to your shopping experience.

Here’s what to know for all products (sponsored and non-sponsored):

• Privacy respecting: We’ve built in Oblivious HTTP (OHTTP), which uses encryption and a third-party server to mask your IP address, so that no one, including Mozilla, can link the products you view back to you or your device.
• You’re in control: If you’d prefer not to see “More to consider” product recommendations - including Sponsored products - in Review Checker, you can easily turn them off. Simply go to Settings at the bottom of Review Checker and toggle “Show recommendations and sponsored content” to off. 
• Relevant suggestions: All products are relevant to the product you're currently viewing and not based on your past searches or products you’ve viewed before. For example, if you’re currently viewing a standing desk, we may show a recommendation for another standing desk.
• Reliable reviews: Every “More to consider” product recommendation we show you has an adjusted rating of 3.5 stars or better, which is based only on reviews we deem to be reliable. Every product also has reviews earning a letter grade of A or B indicating these product reviews are likely from real customers. 

We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas once you try it out.

[wutongtaiwan]

Whether or not Oblivious HTTP technology can be used in Firefox. I want to build this technology into Firefox

[Erwan]

What horror, are we really there? Mozilla disappoints me more and more.
 
I hope that at least (and for once) this feature will be turned off BY DEFAULT and not sneakily added to users who still believe Firefox is protecting them.
 
What you call “recommended and/or sponsored content” is nothing more, nothing less, than advertising from which we were supposed to be protected. Whether it is more or less anonymized or not does not change the fact that we receive advertising.

[IcyAnus]

Would you prefer Mozilla goes bankrupt & we lose Mozilla altogether? Because that's where that problem heads.

They already lost their major income source, which was some deal with Google apparently, I read about it but i don't recall specifics.

The only other revenue source they have, is donations & sponsored content. If you get rid of their income stream, we lose Mozilla. Non Profits cannot survive & pump out constantly developed products with no income.

Mozilla is our friend, if you'd rather give your main browsing data to Google & Microsoft as well, go for it. I'll take sponsored content any day over losing Thunderbird & Firefox.

[Erwan]

NGO, association, public service: doesn’t that mean anything to you?? Why do some survive and others drift? This is too big a subject to cover here.
 
I use a very large quantity of free services maintained by communities, sometimes even 100% volunteers.
 
I myself work in a non-profit association.
 
Not everything depends on Mozilla, I admit, but I have the impression that it is not particularly trying to avoid the current drift. These are directions decided and taken by a certain person.
 
There are several other browsers maintained by other communities, if Firefox is no longer a Safe Zone (as I perceive it today), I will find my happiness elsewhere.
 
One last thing: If Mozilla goes bankrupt, maybe it should stop wasting its money on AI development and focus on its business: tools that respect users, their privacy and their personal data (and the planet it wouldn't hurt).
 
But I also agree that we: users and voters, have a large share of responsibility in what happens in our societies and that the freedom of the internet also depends on our ballot boxes. To the wise.
 
Ps: I do not use ANY Google/Microsoft services knowingly and willingly.

[lackey]

Companies are never your friend!

Google used to be our friend, and they would do no evil. 

[greatwoohoo]

I will tolerate this because it is opt-in. But the line for me to drop the browser (Firefox) is thinning to the point it is becoming transparent, an atom thick. Please don't push it any further.

Thank you.

[Nobody_of_note]

Oh yay!  More ways to be advertised to!!

What a joke.  I already cancelled my subscriptions and moved from FF to a fork that actually cares about my privacy.

Gonna be sad watching this slow slide into irrelevancy for Mozilla and Firefox.

[onequest]

Interesting update, thanks for sharing. Does any of this work on Android/mobile? It doesn't look like it, but that's my main computer so I wouldn't be able to use these features until it is.

[Nobody_of_note]

Its amusing to see bots coming in to post ads on a topic discussing FF adding additional ways to market to its use base.

[Patzilla22]

Congratulations on 20 years! I've used FF through the 20 years and appreciate the work you've done.

[ArnoldGreybeard]

I am unable to try it out as I do not shop at any of the (online) stores listed above, none of them have a presence in my country. I do admit to having used BestBuy during a recent overseas holiday but the purchase was made in the store itself. The decision to buy was based primarily on information sourced from my country of residence and not using Amazon reviews.

I am satisfied that this feature is opt in (for the time being at least). However, I would like the settings for the "Review Checker for Firefox" to actually be in the settings section of Firefox. There is no mention of the review checker either under the hamburger menu nor the main settings pages nor under Add-ons. As I do not shop at any of the above stores I would only be able to find out if it were enabled by going to one of the websites with Firefox and checking. Unless I am missing something very obvious.

Why is this important? One of the switches to turn on another ad related feature has already been set to True as default ( see https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/share-your-thoughts-on-how-you-shop-online/m-p/48763/high... ) so it seems to me that this could happen at some time in the future with the Review Checker. As there is no clear information on the Mozilla help pages as to how this feature is compliant with the GDPR it is essential to be able to be aware of the status of the Review Checker and if one has inadvertently opted in to having browsing data collected, or have been opted in by default, in order to be able to use the service. A service that might not be run in accordence with the GDPR.

As a last point the Review Checker is acting as a funnel for the three retailers listed above pushing users who wish to use the feature to spend their money at these three large profitable US based corporations. At least one of these is known for its active no-holds-barred anti-union stance and treats its workers in a less than acceptable manner. Which is something that I am not willing to support.