7 ms·
In my eyes, at least, Mozilla has been tainted since the Pocket fiasco, if not before. That's when they made it obvious they'd sell their users off for a buck.
by TylerE 3y ago
In my eyes, at least, Mozilla has been tainted since the Pocket fiasco, if not before. That's when they made it obvious they'd sell their users off for a buck.
- p-e-w 3y agoPocket is crapware, and I don't want it in my browser, and the way they forced it upon me left a bad aftertaste, but I still don't see how it constitutes "selling out their users". Pocket is actually owned by Mozilla. It's not like the data is going elsewhere or something.
- Knee_Pain 3y agoThe funny thing is that even though it's a Mozilla product now and even though it's somehow "integrated" in the browser, I still have to log into it separately regardless of the fact that I am already logged with with Firefox Sync
- p-e-w 3y agoAnd that's more than six years after the acquisition. This was very poorly handled for sure.
- AshamedCaptain 3y agoMy wild guess is that they could not do a SSO with Pocket and Firefox Sync until they got rid of all the other authentication providers/methods that Pocket supported, a change which people like me would complain about.
- benterix 3y ago> My wild guess is that they could not do a SSO with Pocket and Firefox Sync until they got rid of all the other authentication providers/methods that Pocket supported Why? Technically, it shouldn't be impossible - one shouldn't exclude the other.
- mariusor 3y agoJavaScript that the Kobo can't execute for example. The browser/web view on Kobos is very very limited.
- internetter 3y agoActually as a kobo owner I've always wondered what JavaScript it can execute, what styles it can render, ect. Always seemed wildly inconsistent. Any idea?
- mariusor 3y agoI suspect that very little, if any can be executed. No hard data nor first hand knowledge on that though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mariusor 3y agoFunny that you mentioned that, they're switching quite soon: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pocket-firefox-account-migration https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pocket-firefox-account-...
- __jonas 3y agoI was using Pocket when they announced the start of the transition a while back and their flow to migrate bookmarks to the Firefox account just didn't work, I ended up with an empty account – maybe because I was using a different email address for my Firefox account than for my Pocket account but it made me stop using Pocket altogether, really annoying.
- anonymous_sorry 3y agoI was a Pocket user from before they were bought, so I wouldn't call it crapware personally. Isn't it just a way to sync a reading list across browsers, and have those pages pre-cached on a mobile device for reading when you have no connection? I'm interested in what people find objectionable about it. The strongest argument I've heard is that it's not core browser functionality, it was fine before Mozilla bought them, and therefore it's just a distraction/bloat for Firefox. Which is definitely arguable, but probably not a reason to write off the biggest independent browser.
- spencerflem 3y agoAs a Firefox appreciator, it's just not something I ever really wanted to use and it got a pretty prominent place in the UI when it came out. Has similar vibes to when windows added the weather forecast to the awesome bar. Imo the people making a big deal out of it are using it to justify why they're OK sticking with chrome (best case), or have a partisan political reason to hate Mozilla because of their ESG / DEI positions (ughhhhhh)
- AshamedCaptain 3y agoI was a Pocket user basically since it launched (I was looking for an AvantGo replacement, so imagine that), and I still don't understand Mozilla's purchase or very heavy-handed advertisement of it.
- dralley 3y agoSimple: it's profitable. One of the few profitable side ventures they have. HN loves to simultaneously criticize Mozilla for 1) being utterly financially dependent on Google 2) putting resources into anything except Firefox 3) doing anything that smells like monetizing Firefox Spoiler alert: They can't avoid 1 without doing 2 or 3. It is what it is.
- internetter 3y agoI'm bothered that it's still not open source, despite promises when it was first announced (it's been 6 years!)
- twelvechairs 3y agoWhat's the alternative though? All the others have already sold their users off ...
- memefrog 3y agoThe alternative is Mozilla not doing so.
- TylerE 3y agoThey're all effectively the same on that point, so I use the one who's interface I prefer, and which performs best on my hardware. Firefox is neither.
- spencerflem 3y agoI cannot believe how much Hacker News equivocates: A browser made by an Ad Tech company that aims to lock down and control the web. And a browser made by a nonprofit that occasionally makes a minor mistep. You cannot seriously compare the remote attestation DRM, manifest v3 changes, to, what ? the Mr. Robot ad that was tacky? the pocket integration that's pointless and annoying but otherwise harmless? Seriously, y'alls double standards are insane and focuses so much towards how bad it was that Brendan Eich got kicked out that it comes off as extremely political
- TylerE 3y agoI honestly don’t give an fuck about drm or attestatuon. There are only so many things one can find time to care about, and neither makes my list.
- spencerflem 3y agoYeah, I'd understand not caring. That's a pretty common and reasonable take, though I'd hope a tech website like this would be more pro-privacy. But actively caring about browser companies, and choosing Chrome because Mozilla "sold out" when they added pocket is a pretty wild take imo.
- memefrog 3y ago[flagged]
- monooso 3y agoGiven how much flak Brave (and by extension Eich) gets on HN, it's somewhat ironic that you identify his departure as the moment when Mozilla abandoned its traditional values.
- memefrog 3y agoHN is obviously, by its very nature, representative primarily of silicon valley.
- TylerE 3y agoMuch less so than 10 years ago, when 2/3rds of the posts were about either combination itself or companies taking part in the accelerator. This is VASTKY more popular and diverse now.
- p-e-w 3y agoDiverse in nationalities and backgrounds, yes. Diverse in viewpoints, not so much. The Overton window is quite narrow on HN, and I have the distinct impression it is narrowing further. Though I do admit that within that window, discourse is very lively, to the extent that a casual observer can easily be fooled into believing this is a place for free exchange of ideas.
- ekianjo 3y ago> This is VASTKY more popular and diverse now. How do you measure diversity on HN?
- TylerE 3y agoLooking at the amount of traffic coming from Non-US IPs would be a start. It was incredibly US centric back in the day.