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subway

I had a glimmer of hope when I saw this headline.

"Oooh, I hope, they're going to move Pocket out to an optional extension!"

If only.

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That's what I thought, too. But no:

We recently started testing personalized recommendations, and we will soon experiment with showing an occasional sponsored story within the Pocket Recommendations section in New Tab Page in Firefox Beta.

Arrgh. Do not want. At all. I don't want "personalized" anything. I don't want Firefox to collect data about me. I run "Fennec", a version of Firefox without the crap, on my phone. That's what F-Droid, the all open source app site, loads.

I'm not that fanatical about privacy. I just hate ads in my face. I have enough ad blocking that I'm barely aware that the Internet has ads.

There's no more collection than what is happening when Firefox collects and stores browser history locally. If you disable that, the personalisation will probably be nonfunctional. According to mozilla, no "personalisation data" is sent to mozilla, it's all done locally.

https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-reco...

Pocket really should be optional. This move to monetize that integration suggests to me that Pocket is here to stay.

Mozilla acquired Pocket last year, so I assume they want to use it as much as they can.

extensions.pocket.enabled=false

Which would be the default, if Mozilla cared about users.

It would be a fully removable extension if it actually did. Nothing less. Even after Pocket code is open source, if at all - the least I am going to accept from Firefox is:

1. pocket as a fully removable extension

2. turned off by default

I don't understand why Mozilla prioritised integrating and then buying a closed-source alternative to the existing open-source project Wallabag.

How does deeply integrating one service provider — making it harder for their competition — promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the web?

What difference would that make, compared to if it's there and you never click on it?

I believe the answer to that question is that the user can't really be sure that the code is really disabled.

Personally, I have had Pocket disabled since the moment it was deployed and I am happy enough with that. I don't really have any reason to think that they are still siphoning data off me, like Windows 10. At least, I trust that if they did I would read about it on HN.

Why single out Pocket, then? Why not bundle other extensions, like uBlock or Privacy Badger, or TabMixTree or hundred of others. After all, you don't have click on them.

Now only if hardware accelerated composition for Linux and hardware accelerated video decoding for Linux could be implemented using extensions...

Firefox users were asking for a read-it-later feature and Firefox devs were looking into implementing it. It was already something they were going to add to the product. They picked Pocket because it was a lot easier than making something from scratch, and they worked with Pocket to change their privacy policy and open-source the browser addon.

If they had it as a priority, they could make it as an extension, so those asking for it would have it and those not wanting it would not. They already have (or had) APIs for that. No need to bloat the core product.

It was an extension. And a good extension at that.

But they baked it inside browser so that it can't be removed and shipped it enabled by default. Lots of outrage. Then yes, they shipped a way to "disable" it but still not a removable extension.

That was the last time I either used Firefox or Pocket. Never felt a need again - Safari and self hosted Wallabag and Pinboard have been my setup since.

And Bonzi Buddy was just helping us to do our shopping (or whatever the hell it did).

For one, the very presence of a useless feature, enabled or disabled, increase the chance of vulnerabilities. It also introduces more uncertainty. If I turn it off, is it really off? Is there a bug that misreads user preferences? Far worse, when a feature is for advertising and monetization, conflict of interest are introduced. The fact that they're quietly turning it on for some users is already a huge breach of trust.

I've heard zero complaints about the reading list feature in Microsoft Edge.

Which is funny because, in terms of their primary purpose, there's not much difference between Edge's Reading List and Firefox's Pocket.

If most detractors were honest with themselves the reason that Pocket had the backlash is because people saw it as a move towards the commercialisation of Firefox. The fact that Mozilla now owns Pocket outright seems to be largely ignored.

The kinds of people who would complain about the reading list feature in Microsoft Edge are probably using firefox not Microsoft Edge.

Personally I was very sad when Mozilla started bundling an extension for a third party commercial service that I didn't trust and had overlapping functionality with other services that I use and have trusted for many years. It's slightly better now that they've acquired Pocket, but a huge part of why I use firefox is because I don't like feeling like I'm the product when I'm using the internet.

What difference made the search bars in IE if you never clicked on them?

Mozilla should never have added Pocket by default, and should remove it. But they won't, just like they set a default search engine for you: they need money. They might be a non-profit, but they do pay wages and have other costs and therefore they need a business model. They choose cooperating with advertisment companies.

Sometimes I think Mozilla's FireFox acts as an supposedly user-focused advertisement for the web whereas the web is abhorrent. When thinking along these lines, it is beneficial for Google to give Mozilla money so there is atleast someone that pretends to make the web work only for the user. After all, Google wants the web in its current state to appear like a good thing.

We really need new browsers that do not play along with advertizers. But I think with the hype train that FireFox has it is difficult to get people to stop and think if things are really going well with it.

You know Mozilla owns Pocket now, right? They're not tracking you or selling your data to someone who does.

The second part doesn't follow from the first.

If they're willing to force-install an advertisement on browsers, who knows what they're doing behind the scenes.

> "What difference made the search bars in IE if you never clicked on them?"

The Pocket button is tiny. I often forget it's there. Furthermore, other browsers have similar "Read It Later" features, do you have a problem with those too?

"Read It Later" type services are useful in browsers as alternative to bookmarks. Are you going to complain that bookmarks should be an optional browser feature as well? Are you really that bothered by a couple of small buttons in the corner of your browser UI?

Ah, so unilateral install of unwanted commercial applications are fine for you as long as each one defaults to a standard icon.

You'll be happy when they add the Nike, Netflix, Tesla, or Chanel logos then so long as each is only a standard icon?

"It's just one icon ..." well two that I know of so far.

> "You'll be happy when they add the Nike, Netflix, Tesla, or Chanel logos then so long as each is only a standard icon?"

Quoting myself...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16233707

"If most detractors were honest with themselves the reason that Pocket had the backlash is because people saw it as a move towards the commercialisation of Firefox. The fact that Mozilla now owns Pocket outright seems to be largely ignored."

You can disable pocket.. that's the first thing i did when i installed firefox.

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