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Comment by roughly | Hacker News Reader

Been using LibreWolf for a week or so since someone mentioned it in a comment elsewhere - UX-wise, it's pretty much identical to Firefox. I'm happy it doesn't have Pocket and the rest of Mozilla's recent product launches arguing for space in my life. My Firefox setup was already pretty solidly "paranoid/misanthropic", so I haven't really noticed any new issues from Libre, but you may.

Overall, it's a pretty good implementation of "Firefox By Mozilla-the-Foundation not Mozilla-the-Corporation." I've been using Firefox at least in part because I think a mono- or even duo-polistic internet is a Bad thing, but Mozilla's been indifferent-bordering-on-hostile to me as a user class, so I appreciate LibreWolf as a kind of "Chromium for Firefox."

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Pocket is one of the worst things that ever happened to Firefox.

I have my FF homepage set to the newtab page. And as much as I hate the idea of pocket integration, I find myself reading at least 1-2 articles from their recommendations every week.

I also end up reading pocket even though I hate it. I'm pretty sure the articles come from places like hackernews, reddit, and digg since I noticed overlap. Its basically an "aggregate aggregator". Android's Newsfeed that comes up my pixel phone is even more annoying because it seems to track everything I read using the same latest techniques they use for ads. If anyone on my intranet or a private intranet I have connected to likes to read something, they'll recommend that category of news to me. I hate it but I end up reading some of the news anyways since it does interest me...

I always assumed that the recommendations are based on what people save to pocket or even save to pocket, and so the bias towards HN/reddit I figured was due to an overrepresentation of Firefox/pocket users on those sites compared and/or the bias of what pocket users choose to save vs simply a sampling of what gets published.

I don't actually use pocket. I even removed the icon from the toolbar. I just some times click articles on the newtab page. Here is some info on how FF handles those recommendations.

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

There's no telling just how many times I've had to turn Pocket off.

Meanwhile I did it like once and haven't seen pocket in years now

every time i install a new operating system on a pc/laptop i just copy over my .mozilla directory. I've disabled pocket literally once on one computer and never thought about it again

The mobile version has much more of a problem with taking no for an answer :)

It's not quite as bad as Microsoft "We really think you should try to use edge so we'll set it as default for you with every major update! And bug you with popups everywhere we can!" But not as clear as the desktop version either.

In fact the mobile one has so many settings and add-ons blocked that sometimes it feels as if it's made by a different company. It completely lacks the things that make Firefox great :(

I still use it because of sync and uBlock origin which at least works now.. But it's pretty mediocre imo. And most of this is intentional design.

Sounds like Librewolf might improve your life, then!

I am confused by this. When Pocket first appeared, I simply set my new tab to blank and haven't thought about it since unless I read the extreme vitriol. Is there something I am missing?

You aren't missing anything. It was just a PR failure that users here won't forgive.

It's a user failure, IMHO.

> a PR failure

Warning: puns

… Yes, in the sense that it's not open source and therefore you can't make a pull request on it.

Seriously, the server part of Pocket is closed-source, and that's why I'm suspicious of it. I don't trust that it's operating in my interests.

Teach a man to fish and he'll thank you. Hang around all the time offering him some fish you caught that's totally free to you but don't worry it's really good fish and you'll love it why don't you try it, and he'll start to think you're a bit fishy.

And I don't understand why Mozilla would buy a closed-source service in order to compete with the open-source Wallabag.

It's emblematic of Mozilla turning into “just another digital lifestyle brand” and losing the ideology that made Mozilla what it was, radically user-empowering. It's pathetic, in the classical sense that I pity Mozilla for how faint a shadow of its former self it's become.

> It's emblematic of Mozilla turning into “just another digital lifestyle brand” and losing the ideology that made Mozilla what it was, radically user-empowering. It's pathetic, in the classical sense that I pity Mozilla for how faint a shadow of its former self it's become.

I've been looking to put words to what's going wrong at Mozilla recently but you captured this perfectly.

When Pocket was acquired, it was with the intention of open-sourcing the entire stack, including the backend. As you can imagine, transforming an in-house bootstrapped startup software not originally made with anything but a single closed deployment in mind is not trivial.

The intention is still there and they have continuously made more and more parts of the backend public, as can be seen on their GH profile.

There's little in terms of docs but step by step they seem to be getting there.

https://github.com/Pocket

Seriously - it has never once interfered with my standard browser usage, and my dad loves it to build his reading list.

What's the issue? It's not open source?

Adware.

It's reappeared a few times for me in mobile probably due to some changes done with new defaults. Of course the mobile browser already blocks access to about:config also so it's very hard to harden it against tracking.

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