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Its existence signifies that something fundamentally is wrong with Firefox and where Mozilla spends its resources. If it is so unpopular, how come Firefox hasn

by verroq 6y ago

Its existence signifies that something fundamentally is wrong with Firefox and where Mozilla spends its resources. If it is so unpopular, how come Firefox hasn’t axed it? How come only popular things like advanced extension support gets axed? These are the questions I ask when I use Firefox. Why are they spending time and resources on horrific products like Pocket when they could be literally improving their browser. Why is it pushed so aggressively and shamelessly? Pocket is the perfect representation of all the grievances against Firefox rolled into an annoying in-your-face product and so of course it’s going to be the punching bag.

godelski 6y ago
> Its existence signifies that something fundamentally is wrong with Firefox and where Mozilla spends its resources. Why? I don't understand this. Mozilla needs to make money somehow. Unfortunately we don't live in a post scarcity world where programmers just contribute to OSS because they enjoy it and want to make the world better. Currently they do it because of those things AND because they need an income. Unfortunately things still cost money. (I think this answers your last few questions as well too) > If it is so unpopular, how come Firefox hasn’t axed it? I think this is sampling and internal bias. Have you seen the numbers of clicks? I haven't. But I rather like pocket.
- verroq 6y ago
  They are allowed to make good products too you know. If Pocket is the best they got then they deserve go to zero. If they have a product so polarising then maybe it shouldn’t be bundled as bloat to the browser.
  - tasty_freeze 6y ago
    verroq -- can you tell me which browser you use that doesn't suffer from any feature you don't like? Or is it a philosophical problem where a non-profit adding a small feature to raise revenue means it should be abandoned and died, but if a for profit company building a browser can incorporate all manner of devious and privacy harming features but that is acceptable because you expect so little from for-profit companies?
    - verroq 6y ago
      Being a non-profit doesn’t give them a pass on making bad products. Being open source doesn’t give a free pass on bad products. If they choose a unsustainable business model, where making profit ruins their product, then they created this problem themselves. I run Chromium, it probably spies on me, but it doesn’t do it in my face, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. When I run Firefox, they say they care, but they shamelessly bundle that crapware. Makes me wonder if another day after another Firefox update they’ll add Pocket 2.0 without me knowing. It’s the same issue I have with Brave as well, I cannot stand the BAT integration.
      - stjohnswarts 6y ago
        Your arguments are so full of holes I don't even know where to start. Pocket is fully documented and very easy to turn off. That's all I'm going to reply to you on this. Good grief.
      - tasty_freeze 6y ago
        I guess the difference is you value things vastly differently. This feature, which doesn't spy on you and takes epsilon resources if not used and can be disabled with two clicks "ruins their product", makes firefox a "bad product", and this feature is "shameless crapware." But chrome spying on you apologetically is acceptable.
- monadic2 6y ago
  While Mozilla has to beg for scraps we're all being sold up the river.
  - godelski 6y ago
    How? Personally I'd rather be shown an ad (sponsored stories) than have my data taken.
ForHackernews 6y ago
I like Pocket. I think it's great and I enjoy the interesting articles it recommends to me. I never would have gone looking for something like it, so I'm glad Mozilla added it.
- codemonkey-zeta 6y ago
  I have yet to find any site/service on the internet with more varied (in a good way) recommendations. Some of it is junk, but I find myself laughing at least once a week at some of the articles pocket recommends. Today's highlights: 1. What did Jesus wear? 2. What happens to your body when you walk 10,000 steps every single day 3. A 16-million-year-old tree tells a deep story of the passage of time My first reactions: I mean, what did Jesus wear? 16 million years seems way too long... I would never have looked up any of these things, and the odds of me stumbling upon them on Reddit, Facebook, etc. feels extremely low. The sort of stuff Pocket recommends just feels so different to the things other sites recommend to me. I've been a long-time fan of Pocket (even before it was added to FF), so there is some bias, but every time I open a new tab in FF and navigate to some site, there's that split-second of loading where I glimpse these titles, and very often I find myself clicking the back button to do a double-take. Pocket is good. I like it. To each his own.
bayindirh 6y ago
> If it is so unpopular, how come Firefox hasn’t axed it? Because I don't think it's quite unpopular. I'm a Pocket subscriber and use it very heavily, even before it joined Mozilla and got integrated into FF). It provides some revenue stream into Mozilla and it's a genuinely useful service. > How come only popular things like advanced extension support gets axed? There was a very detailed blog post about it recently. It boils down the architecture being a roadblock and being very open to operational abuse in terms of security and privacy of the users. Sometimes, the most elegant and useful code gets the axe because, it genuinely blocks something further down the road. It's painful but, it sometimes needs to happen like this. Firefox is a very old code base. It's every part has been changed over time but, these changes were always gradual and connected to previous iterations so, the evolution kinda had a forced path out from some states. > Why are they spending time and resources on horrific products like Pocket when they could be literally improving their browser. Why is it pushed so aggressively and shamelessly? You might be thinking some service/product to be horrific but, I personally like to be able to read some stuff distraction free and being able store its permanent copies with my annotations on it very convenient from a knowledge base perspective. Looks like I'm not the only one so, the service's still alive.
- verroq 6y ago
  I just think it is very seedy to bundle it with the browser and it rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    Google bundles a complete platform and a lot of proprietary features for Google products with Chrome, most people don't bat an eye. Opera bundles some features more than a browser (VPN, et al.) with the browser, similarly people don't get rubbed by it. Mozilla puts a button which is just a scriptlet to the UI and people got tipped off. It just sits there and can be turned off [1]. I've never experienced any aggressive marketing for Pocket by Firefox (in app or out of band). I only get a weekly articles digest which, I subscribed and, that's all. I wish we were living in an era where free and high quality software just survive without any revenue stream and web is not a mess of standards, bombardment of adverts and analytics frameworks and other sinister stuff but, that ship has unfortunately sailed and, I personally still angry about it. [1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-re-enable-pocket-for-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-re-enable-po...
addicted 6y ago
Pocket was extremely popular. The problem was that Pocket was a 3rd party extension that Mozilla, in a hurry to match the Instapaper like capabilities Chrome and Safari added, integrated into Firefox. The deep integration of a 3rd party extension quite rightly did not sit well with many people. However, since then, Mozilla has bought Pocket and there really is no reason to complain about Pocket integration anymore than complaining about Read It Later integration In Safari, or bookmarks. There may be complaints about it from the perspective that I believe that Pocket is still closed source, which would be valid, but not Fromm browser users perspective.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Bookmark sync is end to end encrypted. Pocket isn't. It replaced a feature that was. Mozilla misrepresents it as more private than it is.[1] Why isn't closed source a valid complaint from a user's perspective? [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/pocket/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/pocket/
  - bad_user 6y ago
    Lacking end-to-end encryption is a valid complain, but note that encrypted bookmarks still exist in Firefox, and Firefox's capabilities are still better than Chrome's. For example Firefox's bookmarks can be tagged, and you can easily search them from the AwesomeBar. Pocket does not replace bookmarks, and if you try using Pocket for bookmarking, you're going to have a terrible experience. As a disclaimer, I am a Pocket user.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      Pocket replaced Reading List. I only mentioned bookmarks because they said there was no reason to complain about Pocket any more than bookmarks. Why would using Pocket for bookmarks be a terrible experience, out of curiosity? Pocket doesn't have folders but Firefox makes tagging bookmarks easier than using folders anyway.
      - 6y ago
bosswipe 6y ago
All this animosity is so weird to me because I like and use Pocket and I'm glad it's there and helps Mozilla.
interestica 6y ago
I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of the Firefox browser experience (crappy sync-across-devices for one) but I'm a huge fan of Pocket. My favourite use is via a Kobo e-reader that can sync the articles for offline viewing. It's just a fairly painless experience on different devices to 'save to pocket' and be able to read a clean version elsewhere later.
- reciprocity 6y ago
  What issues are you experiencing re: "crappy sync-across-devices"? Having a Firefox account makes all this seamless.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
> If it is so unpopular, how come Firefox hasn’t axed it? "I don't like it and some people I know don't like it" is not evidence for something being unpopular in general. > How come only popular things like advanced extension support gets axed? https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-addons/ https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-addo...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Also if you don't like it, it's extremely easy to turn off.

by verroq 6y ago

godelski 6y ago

> Its existence signifies that something fundamentally is wrong with Firefox and where Mozilla spends its resources. Why? I don't understand this. Mozilla needs to make money somehow. Unfortunately we don't live in a post scarcity world where programmers just contribute to OSS because they enjoy it and want to make the world better. Currently they do it because of those things AND because they need an income. Unfortunately things still cost money. (I think this answers your last few questions as well too) > If it is so unpopular, how come Firefox hasn’t axed it? I think this is sampling and internal bias. Have you seen the numbers of clicks? I haven't. But I rather like pocket.

verroq 6y ago
They are allowed to make good products too you know. If Pocket is the best they got then they deserve go to zero. If they have a product so polarising then maybe it shouldn’t be bundled as bloat to the browser.
- tasty_freeze 6y ago
  verroq -- can you tell me which browser you use that doesn't suffer from any feature you don't like? Or is it a philosophical problem where a non-profit adding a small feature to raise revenue means it should be abandoned and died, but if a for profit company building a browser can incorporate all manner of devious and privacy harming features but that is acceptable because you expect so little from for-profit companies?
  - verroq 6y ago
    Being a non-profit doesn’t give them a pass on making bad products. Being open source doesn’t give a free pass on bad products. If they choose a unsustainable business model, where making profit ruins their product, then they created this problem themselves. I run Chromium, it probably spies on me, but it doesn’t do it in my face, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. When I run Firefox, they say they care, but they shamelessly bundle that crapware. Makes me wonder if another day after another Firefox update they’ll add Pocket 2.0 without me knowing. It’s the same issue I have with Brave as well, I cannot stand the BAT integration.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      Your arguments are so full of holes I don't even know where to start. Pocket is fully documented and very easy to turn off. That's all I'm going to reply to you on this. Good grief.
    - tasty_freeze 6y ago
      I guess the difference is you value things vastly differently. This feature, which doesn't spy on you and takes epsilon resources if not used and can be disabled with two clicks "ruins their product", makes firefox a "bad product", and this feature is "shameless crapware." But chrome spying on you apologetically is acceptable.
monadic2 6y ago
While Mozilla has to beg for scraps we're all being sold up the river.
- godelski 6y ago
  How? Personally I'd rather be shown an ad (sponsored stories) than have my data taken.

ForHackernews 6y ago

I like Pocket. I think it's great and I enjoy the interesting articles it recommends to me. I never would have gone looking for something like it, so I'm glad Mozilla added it.

codemonkey-zeta 6y ago
I have yet to find any site/service on the internet with more varied (in a good way) recommendations. Some of it is junk, but I find myself laughing at least once a week at some of the articles pocket recommends. Today's highlights: 1. What did Jesus wear? 2. What happens to your body when you walk 10,000 steps every single day 3. A 16-million-year-old tree tells a deep story of the passage of time My first reactions: I mean, what did Jesus wear? 16 million years seems way too long... I would never have looked up any of these things, and the odds of me stumbling upon them on Reddit, Facebook, etc. feels extremely low. The sort of stuff Pocket recommends just feels so different to the things other sites recommend to me. I've been a long-time fan of Pocket (even before it was added to FF), so there is some bias, but every time I open a new tab in FF and navigate to some site, there's that split-second of loading where I glimpse these titles, and very often I find myself clicking the back button to do a double-take. Pocket is good. I like it. To each his own.

bayindirh 6y ago

> If it is so unpopular, how come Firefox hasn’t axed it? Because I don't think it's quite unpopular. I'm a Pocket subscriber and use it very heavily, even before it joined Mozilla and got integrated into FF). It provides some revenue stream into Mozilla and it's a genuinely useful service. > How come only popular things like advanced extension support gets axed? There was a very detailed blog post about it recently. It boils down the architecture being a roadblock and being very open to operational abuse in terms of security and privacy of the users. Sometimes, the most elegant and useful code gets the axe because, it genuinely blocks something further down the road. It's painful but, it sometimes needs to happen like this. Firefox is a very old code base. It's every part has been changed over time but, these changes were always gradual and connected to previous iterations so, the evolution kinda had a forced path out from some states. > Why are they spending time and resources on horrific products like Pocket when they could be literally improving their browser. Why is it pushed so aggressively and shamelessly? You might be thinking some service/product to be horrific but, I personally like to be able to read some stuff distraction free and being able store its permanent copies with my annotations on it very convenient from a knowledge base perspective. Looks like I'm not the only one so, the service's still alive.

verroq 6y ago
I just think it is very seedy to bundle it with the browser and it rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  Google bundles a complete platform and a lot of proprietary features for Google products with Chrome, most people don't bat an eye. Opera bundles some features more than a browser (VPN, et al.) with the browser, similarly people don't get rubbed by it. Mozilla puts a button which is just a scriptlet to the UI and people got tipped off. It just sits there and can be turned off [1]. I've never experienced any aggressive marketing for Pocket by Firefox (in app or out of band). I only get a weekly articles digest which, I subscribed and, that's all. I wish we were living in an era where free and high quality software just survive without any revenue stream and web is not a mess of standards, bombardment of adverts and analytics frameworks and other sinister stuff but, that ship has unfortunately sailed and, I personally still angry about it. [1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-re-enable-pocket-for-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-re-enable-po...

addicted 6y ago

Pocket was extremely popular. The problem was that Pocket was a 3rd party extension that Mozilla, in a hurry to match the Instapaper like capabilities Chrome and Safari added, integrated into Firefox. The deep integration of a 3rd party extension quite rightly did not sit well with many people. However, since then, Mozilla has bought Pocket and there really is no reason to complain about Pocket integration anymore than complaining about Read It Later integration In Safari, or bookmarks. There may be complaints about it from the perspective that I believe that Pocket is still closed source, which would be valid, but not Fromm browser users perspective.

pseudalopex 6y ago
Bookmark sync is end to end encrypted. Pocket isn't. It replaced a feature that was. Mozilla misrepresents it as more private than it is.[1] Why isn't closed source a valid complaint from a user's perspective? [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/pocket/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/pocket/
- bad_user 6y ago
  Lacking end-to-end encryption is a valid complain, but note that encrypted bookmarks still exist in Firefox, and Firefox's capabilities are still better than Chrome's. For example Firefox's bookmarks can be tagged, and you can easily search them from the AwesomeBar. Pocket does not replace bookmarks, and if you try using Pocket for bookmarking, you're going to have a terrible experience. As a disclaimer, I am a Pocket user.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    Pocket replaced Reading List. I only mentioned bookmarks because they said there was no reason to complain about Pocket any more than bookmarks. Why would using Pocket for bookmarks be a terrible experience, out of curiosity? Pocket doesn't have folders but Firefox makes tagging bookmarks easier than using folders anyway.
    - 6y ago

bosswipe 6y ago

All this animosity is so weird to me because I like and use Pocket and I'm glad it's there and helps Mozilla.

interestica 6y ago

I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of the Firefox browser experience (crappy sync-across-devices for one) but I'm a huge fan of Pocket. My favourite use is via a Kobo e-reader that can sync the articles for offline viewing. It's just a fairly painless experience on different devices to 'save to pocket' and be able to read a clean version elsewhere later.

reciprocity 6y ago
What issues are you experiencing re: "crappy sync-across-devices"? Having a Firefox account makes all this seamless.

JoshTriplett 6y ago

> If it is so unpopular, how come Firefox hasn’t axed it? "I don't like it and some people I know don't like it" is not evidence for something being unpopular in general. > How come only popular things like advanced extension support gets axed? https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-addons/ https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-addo...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Also if you don't like it, it's extremely easy to turn off.