5 ms·

Pocket is great and totally deserves more promotion. I know this will trigger a lot of people saying it's spyware, I used to think that too, but then I embraced

by akerro 6y ago

Pocket is great and totally deserves more promotion. I know this will trigger a lot of people saying it's spyware, I used to think that too, but then I embraced it and it's great for bookmarking, syncthing tabs, reading news as podcasts on mobile etc. It's great.

logeekal 6y ago
Totally agreed. Pocket is amazing it has changed mobile reading for me.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
Something being spyware and you embracing it seem orthogonal. Are you saying it is spyware (not an argument I've seen before) but you choose to use it anyway?
- whereistimbo 6y ago
  It was a third party app and the forced bundling feels like a bloatware. Now Mozilla Corporation owns it, it doesn't really a concern anymore.
- JadeNB 6y ago
  I'm not sure about the claims about spyware—I suspect akerro was simply reporting on the general feeling of the complaints, rather than using precise language—but I know that there was a loud outcry from people unhappy that the proprietary service Pocket was integrated as a part of the core browser, rather than as an extension, which seemed not to be consonant with the stated Mozilla mission to openness and transparency; and that, at least initially, there were no switches to get rid of it. (I don't remember the exact situation now, but whatever it is is the result of Mozilla giving in in response to lots of user push-back against the forced integration.)
- akerro 6y ago
  I said other people will call it spyware, because they don't understand how and it works and what it does.
  - blendergeek 6y ago
    I think the biggest complaint with Pocket is Mozilla's broken promise to open-source it. After that, we will all be able to check for ourselves whether Pocket is spyware. I look forward to that day, may it come soon.
    - akerro 6y ago
      >After that, we will all be able to check for ourselves whether Pocket is spyware. Who watches the watchers? How do you know what's running on the servers?
octodog 6y ago
I agree, pocket is awesome for mobile use and I would recommend it to anyone. My only complaint is not being able to turn off reader view by default in the browser.
lou1306 6y ago
I also use Pocket a lot. Alas, I do wish that they had Kindle integration... As of now I use crofflr [1], which mostly works but is unfortunately no longer updated. [1]: https://www.crofflr.com/ https://www.crofflr.com/
- krtkush 6y ago
  While there are no first party Kindle integrations, I find p2k.co perfect for my use case, i.e. push pocket articles to my Kindle.
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    Me too, p2k is perfect. Initial setup a couple of minutes, then it all happens automatically.
- akerro 6y ago
  try this for kindle https://pushtokindle.fivefilters.org/send.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crofflr.com%2F%23%2Fhome https://pushtokindle.fivefilters.org/send.php?url=https%3A%2...
- torvarun 6y ago
  I have a Kobo Touch e-reader which has Pocket integration built in and it's great. The reader lags at times because of its age, but until Kindle gets Pocket I won't give up on it.
emptysongglass 6y ago
Pocket is great but people need to start holding their feet to the fire: it's been 3 years and Mozilla still hasn't open-sourced the codebase, as they promised they would. [1] [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-pocket/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-po...
- dblohm7 6y ago
  The client is, FWIW.
codq 6y ago
Pocket is great, but it's been a long time since it's seen any innovation, and far too often it clips only a portion of the article I've saved. I can't completely rely on it to ingest an entire long-form article, which forces me to switch back to web-view to make sure Pocket caught the entire piece. It's frustrating.
hnu0847 6y ago
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I find that Pocket is unable to detect duplicate copies of the same article and prevent them from being added to my list unless they were added from Firefox's landing page, i.e. the "Sponsored by Firefox" and "Recommended by Pocket" sections. Is there something I can do to make Pocket prevent duplicates from being added on the basis of the article's URL alone?
driverdan 6y ago
I like and use Pocket but one of the first things I do after installing Firefox is disable Pocket recommendations. It shouldn't be calling external services like that without the user explicitly opting in.
polomi 6y ago
I tried to use it several times, but every time what makes me abandon it is that you have to use a third party service to subscribe to RSS feeds (such as Zappier). RSS is how I find the bulk of articles that I end up reading, so I'm better off just using Inoreader (an online RSS reader, to which you can also save articles like in Pocket). One may argue that RSS and Pocket serve orthogonal purposes, or that I'm trying to use Pocket wrong, but I don't see it that way, all I want is a reliable way to find articles that I'm susceptible to read. To me, Pocket advertizes itself as doing that, but it fails at exactly that.
dancedar 6y ago
The open source (apps) raindrop is a pretty good alternative

by akerro 6y ago

logeekal 6y ago

Totally agreed. Pocket is amazing it has changed mobile reading for me.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago

Something being spyware and you embracing it seem orthogonal. Are you saying it is spyware (not an argument I've seen before) but you choose to use it anyway?

whereistimbo 6y ago
It was a third party app and the forced bundling feels like a bloatware. Now Mozilla Corporation owns it, it doesn't really a concern anymore.
JadeNB 6y ago
I'm not sure about the claims about spyware—I suspect akerro was simply reporting on the general feeling of the complaints, rather than using precise language—but I know that there was a loud outcry from people unhappy that the proprietary service Pocket was integrated as a part of the core browser, rather than as an extension, which seemed not to be consonant with the stated Mozilla mission to openness and transparency; and that, at least initially, there were no switches to get rid of it. (I don't remember the exact situation now, but whatever it is is the result of Mozilla giving in in response to lots of user push-back against the forced integration.)
akerro 6y ago
I said other people will call it spyware, because they don't understand how and it works and what it does.
- blendergeek 6y ago
  I think the biggest complaint with Pocket is Mozilla's broken promise to open-source it. After that, we will all be able to check for ourselves whether Pocket is spyware. I look forward to that day, may it come soon.
  - akerro 6y ago
    >After that, we will all be able to check for ourselves whether Pocket is spyware. Who watches the watchers? How do you know what's running on the servers?

octodog 6y ago

I agree, pocket is awesome for mobile use and I would recommend it to anyone. My only complaint is not being able to turn off reader view by default in the browser.

lou1306 6y ago

I also use Pocket a lot. Alas, I do wish that they had Kindle integration... As of now I use crofflr [1], which mostly works but is unfortunately no longer updated. [1]: https://www.crofflr.com/ https://www.crofflr.com/

krtkush 6y ago
While there are no first party Kindle integrations, I find p2k.co perfect for my use case, i.e. push pocket articles to my Kindle.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Me too, p2k is perfect. Initial setup a couple of minutes, then it all happens automatically.
akerro 6y ago
try this for kindle https://pushtokindle.fivefilters.org/send.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crofflr.com%2F%23%2Fhome https://pushtokindle.fivefilters.org/send.php?url=https%3A%2...
torvarun 6y ago
I have a Kobo Touch e-reader which has Pocket integration built in and it's great. The reader lags at times because of its age, but until Kindle gets Pocket I won't give up on it.

emptysongglass 6y ago

Pocket is great but people need to start holding their feet to the fire: it's been 3 years and Mozilla still hasn't open-sourced the codebase, as they promised they would. [1] [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-pocket/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-po...

dblohm7 6y ago
The client is, FWIW.

codq 6y ago

Pocket is great, but it's been a long time since it's seen any innovation, and far too often it clips only a portion of the article I've saved. I can't completely rely on it to ingest an entire long-form article, which forces me to switch back to web-view to make sure Pocket caught the entire piece. It's frustrating.

hnu0847 6y ago

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I find that Pocket is unable to detect duplicate copies of the same article and prevent them from being added to my list unless they were added from Firefox's landing page, i.e. the "Sponsored by Firefox" and "Recommended by Pocket" sections. Is there something I can do to make Pocket prevent duplicates from being added on the basis of the article's URL alone?

driverdan 6y ago

I like and use Pocket but one of the first things I do after installing Firefox is disable Pocket recommendations. It shouldn't be calling external services like that without the user explicitly opting in.

polomi 6y ago

I tried to use it several times, but every time what makes me abandon it is that you have to use a third party service to subscribe to RSS feeds (such as Zappier). RSS is how I find the bulk of articles that I end up reading, so I'm better off just using Inoreader (an online RSS reader, to which you can also save articles like in Pocket). One may argue that RSS and Pocket serve orthogonal purposes, or that I'm trying to use Pocket wrong, but I don't see it that way, all I want is a reliable way to find articles that I'm susceptible to read. To me, Pocket advertizes itself as doing that, but it fails at exactly that.

dancedar 6y ago

The open source (apps) raindrop is a pretty good alternative