Lets start with removing pocket and installing unlock origin by default. I'll believe you. And I say this as a loyal user since 2006.,
> Important Note: Neither Mozilla nor Pocket receives a copy of your browser history. The entire process of sorting and filtering which stories you should see happens locally in your copy of Firefox.
Do you think they're lying? Do you just hate the idea of any built-in browser integration with proprietary services?
Yes. I hate the idea of any built-in browser integration with proprietary services.
Pocket.enabled
Set to false
Seems pretty simple to me.
But if I did, Google seems 100x the larger problem.
I don't want the browser talking to any site that's not absolutely necessary to display the page. Period.
We've probably already lost that war, because almost all sites today include hundreds of kilobytes of extraneous javascript tracking cruft, and blocking it will frequently break the page display.
At least Mozilla is trying to help on that front with their privacy tools and container tabs.
IMO, Pocket should be an extension, same as any other. Though I wouldn't even mind if the Firefox installer asked if I wanted to install this extension during installation, treating it as a kind of "Mozilla recommended" extension.
1. I don't want recommendations, I didn't ask for recommendations. Having it as a feature that can be enabled for pocket-users might be defensible, opt-out isn't.
2. Even if they're somehow keeping your full browser history on your machine for processing (which is an irrelevant point anyway since it's often synced with your Firefox account anyway), the point is they're collecting data on your personal preferences. The raw data isn't the point, the generated metadata representing a personal profile of you is. It's the processing, regardless of where it takes place, that is objectionable in itself. Doing that processing at all in any form is the antithesis of what Mozilla claims they stand for in this article.
1. turn them off. Like any other application on the planet, you get some defaults and you turn on/off what you want, yourself, if what you want is different from the default. Settings => Home => Firefox Home Content. There's even a settings shortcut on the new tab view to take you to those settings, so turn it off first and see if you feel better now that you'll never see pocket ever again.
2. No it's not, that makes no sense. Processing your local behaviour, and never sending that information to anyone else, is not "the antithesis of what Mozilla stands for" in the slightest. What do you think happens here? Do you think they're sending that metadata to pocket, which then does _more_ processing on their end to match your preferences to recommendations? Because if so: that's not what happens, and it's time to read up on how pocket recommendations actually work to see if you're upset with them for a legitimate reason or whether you just completely misunderstood how this works.
And it's not just me. You're saying that Mozilla is expecting all users to opt-out to protect themselves... from Mozilla itself. By Mozilla claims to be protecting those users...
2. you say it's not the antithesis of what they stand for but you've given no reasoning. Why is Mozilla compiling a personal profile of my browsing preferences not the antithesis of what they stand for? What have I said that isn't in line with the technicalities of how Pocket works? Does Pocket not compile a personal profile of my browsing preferences?
I'm sorry, I normally try to avoid combative tone on hn, but you've written quite a substantive comment all of which simply states that the points in my comment are incorrect with no reasoning behind those statements. It's not really logically cohesive...
The only thing that's being debated is whether sending a personal profile of your browsing preferences compiled from metadata is ok simply because it's not a personal profile of your browsing preferences consisting of your entire browsing history.
You're right that both things are profiles—that's not being argued.
As far as I can tell, the only data that's sent is what Pocket-recommended links were displayed, and if you clicked on them. Is that what you're claiming constitutes a "profile"?
> an irrelevant point anyway since it's often synced with your Firefox account anyway
Only if you sign up for a Firefox account and enable sync!
> the point is they're collecting data on your personal preferences... the generated metadata representing a personal profile of you is.
I don't think this is true. They say:
> Recommendations from Pocket are displayed on your new tab, we collect information about how many times they appear and whether or not you interact with them. However, this information is not associated with any of the other technical and interaction information about you or your copy of Firefox.