5 ms·

Everyone not happy with pocket recommendations, what is the alternate source of revenue? Not enough will pay for the product. On the other hand Mozilla has to c

by pcx 6y ago

Everyone not happy with pocket recommendations, what is the alternate source of revenue? Not enough will pay for the product. On the other hand Mozilla has to compete with Apple, Google & Microsoft, all of whom are fighting hard for the Web. Mozilla is doing good overall. They are doing some fundamental work to get back the technical edge, still trying to keep the future of the platform open with WebAssembly and their products have become much more reliable now. We have to cut them some slack.

bzb3 6y ago
They could use the donations to improve Firefox, to pay the salaries of the engineers, instead of all the political nonsense they do with the foundation. Yes, your donations go towards that. And they could cut the salaries of management instead of giving themselves raises. Instead we got ads in the home page.
- jakemal 6y ago
  Ads that, with a single click, you can hide forever.
- pcx 6y ago
  1. They are doing it with substantially less budget than their competitors. 2. Developers shouldn't have to build software for the greater good by sacrificing their livelihood. 3. I am pretty sure many people building all this amazing tech can definitely get paid better in other places 4. These days when someone like Facebook fails to be bold, I would prefer to support someone like Mozilla who walks the talk.
  - bzb3 6y ago
    I don't think you get what I said. I said: if they stopped throwing money down the drain with the politised foundation and the executives stopped raising their salaries they wouldn't have to run ads and maybe they could even pay their engineers more money.
    - woodruffw 6y ago
      Can you elaborate on the ways in which you feel the Mozilla Foundation is politicized? Their advocacy page[1] feels incredibly vanilla: it emphasizes private communication, online safety, and collaboration with generally well-regarded groups like the EFF. [1]: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/advocacy/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/advocacy/
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - brmgb 6y ago
    > 2. Developers shouldn't have to build software for the greater good by sacrificing their livelihood. No one is talking about the developers. Mitchell Baker received $2,458,350 in 2018. That's up from $1,035,114 in 2014. Have you seen the incredible results which justified this tremendous raise? Personally, I haven't.
    - nojito 6y ago
      Are you ignoring the negotiation with led to a great financial deal with Google in 2017? His raise is 100% justified...unless your implying that any software dev pulling in 150k would be able to negotiate a deal like that.
      - brmgb 6y ago
        First that's her. Then I am going to entirely ignore yoir pointless jab at developers. The discussion was strictly about Baker 150% raise. The 2017 deal was a 8% increase in revenue. That's a significant slow down of the increase trajectory of these deals. Meanwhile every other metrics were going down, most notably market share. 2017 also saw the rebranding and the Pocket deal go through. I still don't think it was worth a 150% increase.
  - smnthermes 6y ago
    Donations to Mozilla Foundation are not used for Firefox development: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_foundation_are_not_used_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Working for openness on the Web is not "political nonsense". Without an open Web, there would be no Firefox.
  - smnthermes 6y ago
    See how Mozilla is fighting for an "open web": https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/youtube-regrets/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/youtube-regrets/
elkos 6y ago
I will be honest, I used to be a very active Pocket user as soon as it got bought by Mozilla, hoping that Mozilla would have open-source a significant part (in not all) the tech behind Pocket (so I could use my own install if wanted) and because the personalized recommendations it provided were very relevant to my interests. Sadly, Pocket hasn't become open-source nor has it kept its awesome personalized recommendations.
tarkin2 6y ago
I don't hate them because I like, trust and want to support Mozilla. I happily click on them. I'd be happier if I knew how my data is being stored, however, since the recommendations seem to be well tailored to my interests.
- sfink 6y ago
  This appears to be the description of exactly that: https://getpocket.com/privacy https://getpocket.com/privacy I find it to be rather well-written for this sort of thing. As in, it was written with an intent to communicate what it's saying, which is the opposite of the usual.
  - tarkin2 6y ago
    It's rather long to be honest. But thanks for posting.
    - als0 6y ago
      It's one of the shortest professional privacy policies I've read.
dtech 6y ago
I would very happily pay a couple of bucks a month (I already do through their donations) to get the "ad-free" version of Firefox. Not sure if it can work for Firefox, but there are enough freemium apps on mobile which seem to make it work
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  But you can do it for free by going into about:config and setting extensions.pocket.enabled to false.
BubRoss 6y ago
Mozilla makes 10s of millions off of the default search bar.
huhtenberg 6y ago
Hold on there for a second. When Pocket was first introduced in Firefox, the official party line was that it was just something temporary donated by the good people of Pocket to plug a feature hole so that you, dear users, won't suffer much while we develop a proper replacement. And now this has somehow transformed into a vitally important revenue stream?
- tandr 6y ago
  Having a secondary revenue other than Google's donations is not a bad idea. Some of us actually like Pocket. My only wish for Pocket to handle links to PDFs
- plorkyeran 6y ago
  They decided to buy Pocket instead. It's no longer a third-party thing.
smnthermes 6y ago
WebAssembly is a security/privacy nightmare: https://www.virusbulletin.com/virusbulletin/2018/10/dark-side-webassembly/ https://www.virusbulletin.com/virusbulletin/2018/10/dark-sid...
- afiori 6y ago
  by that you mean that it allows for obfuscation and performance? It sounds quite meek if the worst attack just consumes more of my battery.

by pcx 6y ago

bzb3 6y ago

They could use the donations to improve Firefox, to pay the salaries of the engineers, instead of all the political nonsense they do with the foundation. Yes, your donations go towards that. And they could cut the salaries of management instead of giving themselves raises. Instead we got ads in the home page.

jakemal 6y ago
Ads that, with a single click, you can hide forever.
pcx 6y ago
1. They are doing it with substantially less budget than their competitors. 2. Developers shouldn't have to build software for the greater good by sacrificing their livelihood. 3. I am pretty sure many people building all this amazing tech can definitely get paid better in other places 4. These days when someone like Facebook fails to be bold, I would prefer to support someone like Mozilla who walks the talk.
- bzb3 6y ago
  I don't think you get what I said. I said: if they stopped throwing money down the drain with the politised foundation and the executives stopped raising their salaries they wouldn't have to run ads and maybe they could even pay their engineers more money.
  - woodruffw 6y ago
    Can you elaborate on the ways in which you feel the Mozilla Foundation is politicized? Their advocacy page[1] feels incredibly vanilla: it emphasizes private communication, online safety, and collaboration with generally well-regarded groups like the EFF. [1]: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/advocacy/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/advocacy/
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- brmgb 6y ago
  > 2. Developers shouldn't have to build software for the greater good by sacrificing their livelihood. No one is talking about the developers. Mitchell Baker received $2,458,350 in 2018. That's up from $1,035,114 in 2014. Have you seen the incredible results which justified this tremendous raise? Personally, I haven't.
  - nojito 6y ago
    Are you ignoring the negotiation with led to a great financial deal with Google in 2017? His raise is 100% justified...unless your implying that any software dev pulling in 150k would be able to negotiate a deal like that.
    - brmgb 6y ago
      First that's her. Then I am going to entirely ignore yoir pointless jab at developers. The discussion was strictly about Baker 150% raise. The 2017 deal was a 8% increase in revenue. That's a significant slow down of the increase trajectory of these deals. Meanwhile every other metrics were going down, most notably market share. 2017 also saw the rebranding and the Pocket deal go through. I still don't think it was worth a 150% increase.
- smnthermes 6y ago
  Donations to Mozilla Foundation are not used for Firefox development: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_foundation_are_not_used_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...
zozbot234 6y ago
Working for openness on the Web is not "political nonsense". Without an open Web, there would be no Firefox.
- smnthermes 6y ago
  See how Mozilla is fighting for an "open web": https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/youtube-regrets/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/youtube-regrets/

elkos 6y ago

I will be honest, I used to be a very active Pocket user as soon as it got bought by Mozilla, hoping that Mozilla would have open-source a significant part (in not all) the tech behind Pocket (so I could use my own install if wanted) and because the personalized recommendations it provided were very relevant to my interests. Sadly, Pocket hasn't become open-source nor has it kept its awesome personalized recommendations.

tarkin2 6y ago

I don't hate them because I like, trust and want to support Mozilla. I happily click on them. I'd be happier if I knew how my data is being stored, however, since the recommendations seem to be well tailored to my interests.

sfink 6y ago
This appears to be the description of exactly that: https://getpocket.com/privacy https://getpocket.com/privacy I find it to be rather well-written for this sort of thing. As in, it was written with an intent to communicate what it's saying, which is the opposite of the usual.
- tarkin2 6y ago
  It's rather long to be honest. But thanks for posting.
  - als0 6y ago
    It's one of the shortest professional privacy policies I've read.

dtech 6y ago

I would very happily pay a couple of bucks a month (I already do through their donations) to get the "ad-free" version of Firefox. Not sure if it can work for Firefox, but there are enough freemium apps on mobile which seem to make it work

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
But you can do it for free by going into about:config and setting extensions.pocket.enabled to false.

BubRoss 6y ago

Mozilla makes 10s of millions off of the default search bar.

huhtenberg 6y ago

Hold on there for a second. When Pocket was first introduced in Firefox, the official party line was that it was just something temporary donated by the good people of Pocket to plug a feature hole so that you, dear users, won't suffer much while we develop a proper replacement. And now this has somehow transformed into a vitally important revenue stream?

tandr 6y ago
Having a secondary revenue other than Google's donations is not a bad idea. Some of us actually like Pocket. My only wish for Pocket to handle links to PDFs
plorkyeran 6y ago
They decided to buy Pocket instead. It's no longer a third-party thing.

smnthermes 6y ago

WebAssembly is a security/privacy nightmare: https://www.virusbulletin.com/virusbulletin/2018/10/dark-side-webassembly/ https://www.virusbulletin.com/virusbulletin/2018/10/dark-sid...

afiori 6y ago
by that you mean that it allows for obfuscation and performance? It sounds quite meek if the worst attack just consumes more of my battery.