32 ms·

Firefox, you're supposed to be in my pocket, not the other way around

Animats 11y ago
Mozilla employment billboard, 101 near SF: "Work for mankind, not for the man". Mozilla reality: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
matthewbauer 11y ago
Is Mozilla getting anything from this? I know in the old days almost all of Mozilla's income came from money Google gave them to set Google as the default search. I suppose you could look at this as a similar thing, the difference is you could easily remove Google as the default if you wanted to.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Manishearth 11y ago
  From what I've heard, no. Mozilla had a reader mode, and instead of implementing their own service for saving things to a cloud, they used an existing, popular one after lots of user research.
  - sp332 11y ago
    Firefox still has a reader mode, based on code from https://readability.com https://readability.com (just like Safari's).
- justcommenting 11y ago
  Their new suitor is Yahoo, but since we're on the subject of Firefox defaults and funding, this reminds me that Firefox's "Show Cookies..." UI has been broken for years. And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult. I could trivially list at least a dozen default Firefox preferences that could readily be explained by conflicts of interest, rather than common sense or Mozilla's commitment to user privacy or their increasingly-touted (and I'm guessing, unpublished) user studies. It would be interesting to study which Firefox 'features' get prioritized or broken or fixed via paid staff time on a given time horizon and plot that against deals Mozilla makes with 3rd parties.
  - throwaway2048 11y ago
    id be interested in a list of preferences please.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult. Tor is willing to break webpages and website features if that keeps the user untracked. That isn't viable for a general purpose browser.
  - asddubs 11y ago
    >And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult. Source? I'd like to read more about this
  - coldpie 11y ago
    > And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult. I don't think Mozilla should be in the business of deciding what content is appropriate for users to view. Users can install extensions to do that if they wish.
  - ryanolsonx 11y ago
    I would be interested in that trivial list. Especially if, in your opinion, some of the preferences should be defaulted to something else.
vacri 11y ago
Is this the modern form of the drive-by-installed toolbar?
- rocky1138 11y ago
  It reminds me a bit of those PCs from the late 1990s where they'd give you a unit free if you give up so much of your screen space to show ads.
- notatoad 11y ago
  No, this is the modern form of the old free version of opera, back when opera was paid software, and they had banner ads embedded in the browser ui.
- mhd 11y ago
  It's more like Google as the default search engine, plus extra toolbar button.
meesterdude 11y ago
mozilla's response: http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/09/mozilla-responds-to-firefox-user-backlash-over-pocket-integration/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/09/mozilla-responds-to-firefo... > Pocket has been a popular Firefox add-on for a long time and we’ve seen that users love to save interesting Web content to easily revisit it later, so it was an easy choice to offer Pocket as a service in Firefox and we’ve gotten lots of positive feedback about the integration from users. > All the code related to this integration within Firefox is open source and Pocket has licensed all the Firefox integration code under the MPLv2 license. On top of that, Pocket asked Mozilla for input on how to improve their policy, based on early comments from Mozillians. After that discussion, Pocket updated their privacy policy in early May to explain more precisely how they handle data. You can read Pocket’s privacy policy here. > Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible. To disable Pocket, you can remove it from your toolbar or menu. If Pocket is removed from the toolbar or menu, then the feature is effectively disabled, though you can still find it again by accessing it in the Customize Panel. You can find detailed instructions here.
- anonymousab 11y ago
  > Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible That's sounds weird. Why wouldn't they just make it opt-in on the "you've been updated" page? Or just bundle the extension?
  - azakai 11y ago
    Almost all users of any popular browser are not tech savvy like you and I and other people here on Hacker News. They would not enable an opt-in feature because it would sound complex and confusing to them. The Firefox design team did studies on this, seeing how real users interact with the feature. The results are that bundling it in the browser makes it useful to a lot of people, overall making the browser experience better for them. That's really all this comes down to - the data shows users are happier, overall, with it present by default. Some users don't like it, like the author of this article, but more users do like it.
nchelluri 11y ago
According to an article I found, the way to disable it via about:config is to set browser.pocket.enabled = false A comment on the post said to restart FF to get the change working. After I did that, the icon left my FF toolbar. http://lifehacker.com/disable-pocket-integration-in-firefox-to-save-memory-1704470743 http://lifehacker.com/disable-pocket-integration-in-firefox-...
- raesene5 11y ago
  Unfortunately what I've found is that it re-appears when you upgrade Firefox, which is annoying.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    You should file a bug. That's absolutely unacceptable. (And I didn't see this happen, so I suspect it wasn't intended)
- endemic 11y ago
  I still see a "View Pocket List" item in the Bookmarks menu, even after disabling. Kind of annoying.
burnte 11y ago
Right click the toolbar, select CUSTOMIZE. Drag the Pocket button off the toolbar. Click "Exit Customize". No more Pocket. I, too, don't care for it, but I'm not going to pretend that the inclusion of a new button that doesn't do anything if you don't use it is like injecting malware into my browser.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  Why is this opt-out and not opt-in, seriously ?
  - azakai 11y ago
    It's opt-out because if it were opt-in, far fewer people would benefit from it. The Firefox design team conducted user research experiments, and found that a significant amount of people like the feature (far more than dislike it). Most of those users are not techies, and would never even hear about an addon, so including it in the browser is the most realistic way to reach them.
    - monochromatic 11y ago
      Or Mozilla could implement something similar but not shady.
      - azakai 11y ago
        I don't see how it's shady. It's quite similar to other browser integrations. For example, Chrome integrates with Google services like Google Translate. All modern browsers do some amount of by-default enabled extra services. Of course, Search is the most familiar such service (google.com, bing, yahoo, etc.). Firefox is, has always been, and always will be, open source. The Mozilla server side is similarly also open source. But Mozilla is quite small compared to Google and Microsoft, and so must partner with external parties for things like Search and Pocket.
        throwaway2048 11y ago
foiboitoi 11y ago
I want Pocket & Telefonica removed. Or at the very least implement something fair like the Search Engine toolbar (in the case for WebRTC video). Except Pocket, why on earth isn't that still just an extension. Why force it on people who don't want it AND withhold the ability to permanently remove it? What's wrong with them?
- GrantSolar 11y ago
  Chrome has google accounts to synchronise recently viewed pages across devices. This is just Mozilla's response. There is already a popular extension, so why re-invent the wheel?
  - lmm 11y ago
    I see this as Mozilla basically admitting that the extension model has failed; this is a textbook example of an extension, but they've decided that's not good enough.
  - sp332 11y ago
    Firefox already has sync built-in. I think this is supposed to be an improvement over the current bookmarks system. Mozilla realized that Pocket was already doing that better than they were, so they just integrated it instead of reinventing it poorly.
    - wtbob 11y ago
      > I think this is supposed to be an improvement over the current bookmarks system. The old secure Sync was great, absolutely great. I could see all of my bookmarks and history from all of my machines, and it was all well-secured. There was nothing wrong with it.
      - sp332 11y ago
        Doesn't it still work the same way?
      - 11y ago
sergiotapia 11y ago
What browser can I use that respects privacy? Mozilla was the last bastion of privacy. The final pillar to lean on. What happened? I miss the early 2000's of the web where everything was the wild west and was untouched by the advertising cancer.
- bitmapbrother 11y ago
  Lynx ;)
- jd3 11y ago
  So install SeaMonkey
- nindalf 11y ago
  Suppose you were to right click -> Customise and remove the icon, the feature is effectively disabled. If you can't take Mozilla's word on that, that's understandable. You can check the integration code - its open source. Now if you're going to say that its the principle of opting-out rather than opting-in, that's a separate discussion. If you're concerned about your privacy, you can protect it in 3 clicks. If you're still concerned, then use IceWeasel or SeaMonkey.
  - listic 11y ago
    How could one go about installing Firefox without Pocket from the command line? Clicking doesn't scale well.
    - coldpie 11y ago
      User preferences are stored in the plain-text file "prefs.js" in your user profile directory. Presumably you could just append the preference to the end. If you want a programmatic way to modify the UI, probably a simple extension could do that using Fx's UI API.
- lmm 11y ago
  Konqueror. The browser that was open-source from day 1 (back when Mozilla was still Netscape), that wrote their own first-class rendering engine with a tiny fraction of the money or developers that Mozilla has. I often wonder how history might've been different if they'd got the money and attention that Mozilla did.
JadeNB 11y ago
I think what I don't get is why this is so important that it has to be bundled in the browser. I have always viewed Firefox as being fiercely, at times absurdly, about the idea of providing a minimal browser on top of which users can use extensions to build whatever customised experience they want. Sure, integrating Pocket allows Mozilla to (in the quote linked by meesterdude (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876221 )) "provide this feature to our users in the best way possible", but the same argument could be made for tons of extensions; I think that they haven't made the case that this one is so important that it needs to be integrated. (Is the extension functionality, which can provide amazing services like Greasemonkey, really so limited that Pocket and Mozilla couldn't work together to write an extension that provides an indistinguishable experience?)
- brighteyes 11y ago
  From other comments here, it sounds like data shows that this one is good for users. You can argue that other extensions might help, but this one has had an actual investigation done proving its benefit.
  - JadeNB 11y ago
    It seems likely that there are lots of other extensions that would also pass the bar of "users" (even 'lots of users'!) "like it in tests". (Also, not to be nit-picky but because I think it's an important distinction, I don't think the investigation here "proved its benefit", but rather showed only that those users tested liked it. I suspect every designer would agree that bundling everything a user wants leads, almost paradoxically, to an unuseable mess.)
    - azakai 11y ago
      There might be more. But tests are time-consuming and can't be done on everything. Also, the number of addons you want to preinstall has to be quite small - past a certain limit, it's too much clutter in the UI, as you correctly said (and indeed the number is very tiny: Pocket, Hello, and Search if you count that). Given the data available, Firefox is a better browser with Pocket than without, on average, for Firefox users. That's justification for bundling it. Perhaps more data will be collected and other addons might be considered later, but again, the bar gets higher and higher since the total number has to remain small.
addicted 11y ago
This is making a mountain of a molehill. Pocket like functionality is an integrated and expected feature of every browser today. Mozilla decided that instead of making the effort to reimplement this (efforts which are better redirected towards stuff like finally completing per tab processes), they would integrate the most popular extension that was being used for this functionality. Pocket does not immediately gain any info about the user until the user explicitly opts in. Mozilla certainly needs to be more transparent about how these companies are selected, and the way this information is first presented to the user. And they have acknowledged they did it poorly with both Telefonica and Pocket, and are looking to improve. But it is in no way an abandonment of their core principles by any stretch of the imagination.
- sjun 11y ago
  Can you point out which other major browsers integrate a feature like Pocket?
  - girvo 11y ago
    Safari's Reading List, no?
    - leonatan 11y ago
      Neither Safari nor IE's reading mode sends or shares any data with a third party entity. If you know differently, please share to the contrary.
  - ethana 11y ago
    IE11 has a reading mode since Windows 8 I think. The replacement Microsoft Edge browser will also include it. Firefox for Android actually had its own 'reading list' for a while too. Won't be long until Pocket will be on Firefox for Android by default if this is their direction.
slowmovintarget 11y ago
Interesting that it's disabled by default in the Developer's Edition.
- gruez 11y ago
  Makes sense. Developers aren't receptive forced addons.
hysan 11y ago
For everyone saying "Customize" this and opt-out/in that. Why not just have Pocket be a pre-installed add-on? That sounds like a compromise that would satisfy both camps and fit in with the Firefox philosophy.
- JadeNB 11y ago
  I think this is a very good point, and I agree! For what it's worth, in the response quoted by meesterdude (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876221), Mozilla said: > Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible. I don't know why (or whether) this direct integration makes such a difference compared to providing it as an extension, or even what is 'best' about it (fastest? Easiest? Most consistent?), but that's what they said. EDIT: On the other hand, mburns (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467) quotes another reply where Mozilla seem to agree with you.
omouse 11y ago
If you don't like Pocket, get more people to use the Sync feature instead or help build out Sync to do what Pocket does. To get to free/open source sometimes you have to start with proprietary software and progressively move over.
- ams6110 11y ago
  I don't want either one.
  - pessimizer 11y ago
    That's not allowed. You must want one, because Chrome has one. You must want everything that Chrome has; that's why you use Firefox.
- pmontra 11y ago
  I'd use Sync with my own server but Firefox on Android is not good enough (rendering is too slow, font inflation sub par, etc) so I don't have anything to sync with. I'm using Opera on my phone and my tablet. Opera doesn't sync with personal sync servers so I'm not syncing between them too.
shmerl 11y ago
Does Mozilla make any money on it? Why would they bundle a non FOSS service into the browser, enabled by default with that?
- zobzu 11y ago
  yes, albeit i bet its negligible compared to the yahoo search deal
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Like Google or Yahoo search you mean? Probably because people find it useful.
  - pessimizer 11y ago
    > Like Google or Yahoo search you mean? Including those has provided most of Firefox's revenue, so they're the worst possible examples.
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      No, they're great examples: most people find search useful and don't object to it, even if it brings Mozilla revenue and if it has privacy implications.
joshmn 11y ago
Time for an open-source pocket clone. I'll start the API.
- zobzu 11y ago
  interestingly - firefox nightly for android has a "reading list" and no pocket which is .. basically pocket on top of firefox sync... also has a nicer integration and its pretty simple.. i dont even..
  - brighteyes 11y ago
    As said in other threads, firefox/mozilla decided to stop developing their own in-house similar feature, and to collaborate with the existing and apparently better pocket.
- jshwlkr 11y ago
  https://github.com/zhy0216/random-read https://github.com/zhy0216/random-read
bdcravens 11y ago
I use Pocket, and am pretty happy with it. However, this bundling may cause me to eye it more critically now.
nacs 11y ago
There's a (currently) 178 response thread for this bundleware in the Mozilla "governance" forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.governance/2PYq2w8tejs/i_IindFDxxgJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.governance/2PY...
hiou 11y ago
When I first heard about this all I could think was "Wow, Mozilla must be having some really serious money concerns right now" I've been a huge Mozilla fan for a long time(I'm typing this on my Firefox OS phone) but this is all starting to feel really hopeless.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  As has been pointed out dozens of times in this thread, Mozilla didn't get any money from the integration. Although indirectly they of course save engineering salaries from not building the feature themselves.
phantom_oracle 11y ago
This is what happens when you have a tightly-coupled "NPO" that needs to use creative means to fund their organization. Mozilla is not exactly light-weight anymore and they have major expenses these days, which means they either need to go cap-in-hat and beg YaGoogFace or tell users that user-interest is still core, whilst integrating "sponsored" plugins deep into the browser. This is no different to getting "free" software on MS back in the 2000s, at the expense of having to install that shitty ask.com toolbar. Privacy and security really seems to be becoming more of a fallacy on the internet now.
- Manishearth 11y ago
  No. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla_is_not_benefiting_from_the_pocket/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla...
  - vultour 11y ago
    So Mozilla said that isn't the case. The NSA also said they aren't spying on American people. You really believe everything you see?
    - Manishearth 11y ago
      IIRC Mozilla needs to open up their sources of revenue at the end of the year anyway because of nonprofitness or whatever (at least, they do do it), so they'd have to disclose it later.
      - rockdoe 11y ago
        https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2013/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2013/ There's some lag in those appearing, though.
cddotdotslash 11y ago
Everyone saying "oh, just right click and remove it; it's so easy" is entirely missing the point. The simple fact is, Mozilla took a third-party, proprietary service and bundled it into the browser. If this becomes the new norm, imagine downloading Firefox v53 and having six different services installed (all consuming memory, collecting personal data, etc.) all because some research studies they collected said "people like this." Sure, every subset of the population is going to like different services. When I download Chrome, I install PushBullet, Disconnect, the Chromecast extension, and Ublock. But that doesn't mean that every other users wants or even needs those same things. The entire purposes of add-ons is that they can be... added onto the default experience. Mozilla has now begun changing the default. While they may claim this was done "purely for the benefit of users," it sure smells like it was done for money. EDIT: for anyone who doesn't think it wasn't about money, please explain why it is so difficult to remove, why I have to open about:config to "disable" (not remove) it, and why it wasn't just added as an add-on (which already existed)?
- throwaway2048 11y ago
  Sure is funny how a little bit of cash goes a long way to ensuring something is for the benefit of the user.
  - emn13 11y ago
    [citation needed].
- brighteyes 11y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467 they will do that, but it takes more effort i guess.
- 21echoes 11y ago
  > (all consuming memory, collecting personal data, etc.) the integration does not collect personal data until the user opts in, and it does not consume memory beyond loading the image from disk until the user opts in. meanwhile, that search bar up at the top is an integrated browser function (not even an add-on) that sends personal data to a 3rd party, closed source server. > please explain why it is so difficult to remove you remove it just like every other thing in your toolbar: click the menu button, drag it off of the toolbar. > Mozilla has now begun changing the default like when they added bookmarks, search, download menu, spaces, and countless other functions? that's literally what browser vendors do.
endtime 11y ago
I know it's beside the point, but Pocket is actually a great product and I actively use it in Chrome and Android.
nefitty 11y ago
Firefox < Opera < Chrome, in terms of performance and business choices...
Animats 11y ago
On top of this, Firefox for Android now demands access to your contacts list. The browser itself has no need for your contacts list. But Mozilla Sync and Pocket do.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Is that in Nightly? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-firefox-android-use-permissions-it-requests https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-firefox-android-use... Doesn't list that permission. I see no reason why Pocket or Sync would require that permission, although Hello likely does.
- eveningcoffee 11y ago
  Thank you for pointing out this possible problem. Must keep eyes open. It is disappointing that it is necessary.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Actually, it seems to be to implement the "Contacts API": https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=857730 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=857730 https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1d77c3062662 https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1d77c3062662 Note that it's only enabled in Nightlies with no plans to ship.
- Animats 11y ago
  Actually, it's access to "Your accounts" that Firefox for Android now wants. That's for "Sync", or so they say. A browser shouldn't have access to your accounts. That opens up a big attack surface.
rockdoe 11y ago
I find it interesting that he considers Firefox getting H264 support as "the browser getting worse and worse". I don't like patented codecs either but there's no argument that making Firefox actually work with pretty much any video website out there is making it better, especially as they fought tooth and nail and only caved in when it was a foregone conclusion that H264 won out. It's easy to see why Mozilla doesn't listen to people like him. (And the tl;dr doesn't seem to agree with what's actually in the documents either)
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  > I find it interesting that he considers Firefox getting H264 support as "the browser getting worse and worse". The issue, at least for me, is that the browser now downloads binary blobs behind my back. Therefore it is no longer an open-source browser, unless I patch it and build my own version to disable this stuff. Firefox being open-source was one of the big selling points originally. Of course it's very convenient that video just works. User-experience wise it's just better. Noone is arguing that. > It's easy to see why Mozilla doesn't listen to people like him. Yes. It's completely understandable, the market for people who don't care about these issues is much larger. The reason many people are annoyed is because the free-software tech crowd used to be the target consumer for mozilla, that's the group that built the brand and the goodwill around it. Now they're turning around and using that goodwill to get new markets, while saying "screw you" to the people who built the brand for them. All the power to them, it's just sad for us old users watching this ship burn. I'm hoping a new project will spring up that picks up the torch and focuses on being an open-source, privacy-preserving browser.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    The issue, at least for me, is that the browser now downloads binary blobs behind my back... Firefox being open-source was one of the big selling points originally. OpenH264 IS open source. Firefox downloads a pre-built binary (that happens to have a patent license included), just like it'll do if you update, for example, Debian Iceweasel. The reason many people are annoyed is because the free-software tech crowd used to be the target consumer for mozilla It still is, but only the people who are willing to be reasonable and listen to arguments. Demanding that a browser in 2015 does not support H264 is not realistic. I mean, there's people arguing here that the current Sync system is a sell-out because it uses passwords instead of the old randomly generated keys. If I see that, and the H264 argument, then I think there's two kinds of "open source communities": the ones that try to build usable products and a big circklejerk that is happy to have a solution only for themselves. If you follow the discussions about ANY kind of open source project that tries to help the mainstream, you'll often see the same pattern. (GNOME and systemd are some easy examples)
eveningcoffee 11y ago
Wth Mozilla.org??? Do we have to create a fork due to your jerky moves? Better get rid of stuff like this.
tgb 11y ago
I have a Pocket account and use their bookmarklet when I want to save something for later reading on my tablet or phone. That should be reasonably private (apart from what I obviously send to them), correct?
gorgak 11y ago
ever since an ad appeared on my firefox ive been looking for something else. tried vivaldi but its based on google code, and i dont support google either. hard to know where to turn next.
ChildOfChaos 11y ago
Honestly who cares... this is not important to your life. People are always looking at reasons to be angry. Grow up.
- hollerith 11y ago
  Firefox is important to the web, and the web is important to our civilization.
- ryanolsonx 11y ago
  It is very important to the open web. People expect more from Firefox because they state what they stand for. See here https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/. Integrating a proprietary service into Firefox is contrary to this.

Mozilla employment billboard, 101 near SF: "Work for mankind, not for the man". Mozilla reality: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

matthewbauer 11y ago

Is Mozilla getting anything from this? I know in the old days almost all of Mozilla's income came from money Google gave them to set Google as the default search. I suppose you could look at this as a similar thing, the difference is you could easily remove Google as the default if you wanted to.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Manishearth 11y ago
From what I've heard, no. Mozilla had a reader mode, and instead of implementing their own service for saving things to a cloud, they used an existing, popular one after lots of user research.
- sp332 11y ago
  Firefox still has a reader mode, based on code from https://readability.com https://readability.com (just like Safari's).
justcommenting 11y ago
Their new suitor is Yahoo, but since we're on the subject of Firefox defaults and funding, this reminds me that Firefox's "Show Cookies..." UI has been broken for years. And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult. I could trivially list at least a dozen default Firefox preferences that could readily be explained by conflicts of interest, rather than common sense or Mozilla's commitment to user privacy or their increasingly-touted (and I'm guessing, unpublished) user studies. It would be interesting to study which Firefox 'features' get prioritized or broken or fixed via paid staff time on a given time horizon and plot that against deals Mozilla makes with 3rd parties.
- throwaway2048 11y ago
  id be interested in a list of preferences please.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult. Tor is willing to break webpages and website features if that keeps the user untracked. That isn't viable for a general purpose browser.
- asddubs 11y ago
  >And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult. Source? I'd like to read more about this
- coldpie 11y ago
  > And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult. I don't think Mozilla should be in the business of deciding what content is appropriate for users to view. Users can install extensions to do that if they wish.
- ryanolsonx 11y ago
  I would be interested in that trivial list. Especially if, in your opinion, some of the preferences should be defaulted to something else.

vacri 11y ago

Is this the modern form of the drive-by-installed toolbar?

rocky1138 11y ago
It reminds me a bit of those PCs from the late 1990s where they'd give you a unit free if you give up so much of your screen space to show ads.
notatoad 11y ago
No, this is the modern form of the old free version of opera, back when opera was paid software, and they had banner ads embedded in the browser ui.
mhd 11y ago
It's more like Google as the default search engine, plus extra toolbar button.

meesterdude 11y ago

mozilla's response: http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/09/mozilla-responds-to-firefox-user-backlash-over-pocket-integration/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/09/mozilla-responds-to-firefo... > Pocket has been a popular Firefox add-on for a long time and we’ve seen that users love to save interesting Web content to easily revisit it later, so it was an easy choice to offer Pocket as a service in Firefox and we’ve gotten lots of positive feedback about the integration from users. > All the code related to this integration within Firefox is open source and Pocket has licensed all the Firefox integration code under the MPLv2 license. On top of that, Pocket asked Mozilla for input on how to improve their policy, based on early comments from Mozillians. After that discussion, Pocket updated their privacy policy in early May to explain more precisely how they handle data. You can read Pocket’s privacy policy here. > Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible. To disable Pocket, you can remove it from your toolbar or menu. If Pocket is removed from the toolbar or menu, then the feature is effectively disabled, though you can still find it again by accessing it in the Customize Panel. You can find detailed instructions here.

anonymousab 11y ago
> Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible That's sounds weird. Why wouldn't they just make it opt-in on the "you've been updated" page? Or just bundle the extension?
- azakai 11y ago
  Almost all users of any popular browser are not tech savvy like you and I and other people here on Hacker News. They would not enable an opt-in feature because it would sound complex and confusing to them. The Firefox design team did studies on this, seeing how real users interact with the feature. The results are that bundling it in the browser makes it useful to a lot of people, overall making the browser experience better for them. That's really all this comes down to - the data shows users are happier, overall, with it present by default. Some users don't like it, like the author of this article, but more users do like it.

nchelluri 11y ago

According to an article I found, the way to disable it via about:config is to set browser.pocket.enabled = false A comment on the post said to restart FF to get the change working. After I did that, the icon left my FF toolbar. http://lifehacker.com/disable-pocket-integration-in-firefox-to-save-memory-1704470743 http://lifehacker.com/disable-pocket-integration-in-firefox-...

raesene5 11y ago
Unfortunately what I've found is that it re-appears when you upgrade Firefox, which is annoying.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  You should file a bug. That's absolutely unacceptable. (And I didn't see this happen, so I suspect it wasn't intended)
endemic 11y ago
I still see a "View Pocket List" item in the Bookmarks menu, even after disabling. Kind of annoying.

burnte 11y ago

Right click the toolbar, select CUSTOMIZE. Drag the Pocket button off the toolbar. Click "Exit Customize". No more Pocket. I, too, don't care for it, but I'm not going to pretend that the inclusion of a new button that doesn't do anything if you don't use it is like injecting malware into my browser.

ekianjo 11y ago
Why is this opt-out and not opt-in, seriously ?
- azakai 11y ago
  It's opt-out because if it were opt-in, far fewer people would benefit from it. The Firefox design team conducted user research experiments, and found that a significant amount of people like the feature (far more than dislike it). Most of those users are not techies, and would never even hear about an addon, so including it in the browser is the most realistic way to reach them.
  - monochromatic 11y ago
    Or Mozilla could implement something similar but not shady.
    - azakai 11y ago
      I don't see how it's shady. It's quite similar to other browser integrations. For example, Chrome integrates with Google services like Google Translate. All modern browsers do some amount of by-default enabled extra services. Of course, Search is the most familiar such service (google.com, bing, yahoo, etc.). Firefox is, has always been, and always will be, open source. The Mozilla server side is similarly also open source. But Mozilla is quite small compared to Google and Microsoft, and so must partner with external parties for things like Search and Pocket.
      - throwaway2048 11y ago

foiboitoi 11y ago

I want Pocket & Telefonica removed. Or at the very least implement something fair like the Search Engine toolbar (in the case for WebRTC video). Except Pocket, why on earth isn't that still just an extension. Why force it on people who don't want it AND withhold the ability to permanently remove it? What's wrong with them?

GrantSolar 11y ago
Chrome has google accounts to synchronise recently viewed pages across devices. This is just Mozilla's response. There is already a popular extension, so why re-invent the wheel?
- lmm 11y ago
  I see this as Mozilla basically admitting that the extension model has failed; this is a textbook example of an extension, but they've decided that's not good enough.
- sp332 11y ago
  Firefox already has sync built-in. I think this is supposed to be an improvement over the current bookmarks system. Mozilla realized that Pocket was already doing that better than they were, so they just integrated it instead of reinventing it poorly.
  - wtbob 11y ago
    > I think this is supposed to be an improvement over the current bookmarks system. The old secure Sync was great, absolutely great. I could see all of my bookmarks and history from all of my machines, and it was all well-secured. There was nothing wrong with it.
    - sp332 11y ago
      Doesn't it still work the same way?
    - 11y ago

sergiotapia 11y ago

What browser can I use that respects privacy? Mozilla was the last bastion of privacy. The final pillar to lean on. What happened? I miss the early 2000's of the web where everything was the wild west and was untouched by the advertising cancer.

bitmapbrother 11y ago
Lynx ;)
jd3 11y ago
So install SeaMonkey
nindalf 11y ago
Suppose you were to right click -> Customise and remove the icon, the feature is effectively disabled. If you can't take Mozilla's word on that, that's understandable. You can check the integration code - its open source. Now if you're going to say that its the principle of opting-out rather than opting-in, that's a separate discussion. If you're concerned about your privacy, you can protect it in 3 clicks. If you're still concerned, then use IceWeasel or SeaMonkey.
- listic 11y ago
  How could one go about installing Firefox without Pocket from the command line? Clicking doesn't scale well.
  - coldpie 11y ago
    User preferences are stored in the plain-text file "prefs.js" in your user profile directory. Presumably you could just append the preference to the end. If you want a programmatic way to modify the UI, probably a simple extension could do that using Fx's UI API.
lmm 11y ago
Konqueror. The browser that was open-source from day 1 (back when Mozilla was still Netscape), that wrote their own first-class rendering engine with a tiny fraction of the money or developers that Mozilla has. I often wonder how history might've been different if they'd got the money and attention that Mozilla did.

JadeNB 11y ago

I think what I don't get is why this is so important that it has to be bundled in the browser. I have always viewed Firefox as being fiercely, at times absurdly, about the idea of providing a minimal browser on top of which users can use extensions to build whatever customised experience they want. Sure, integrating Pocket allows Mozilla to (in the quote linked by meesterdude (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876221 )) "provide this feature to our users in the best way possible", but the same argument could be made for tons of extensions; I think that they haven't made the case that this one is so important that it needs to be integrated. (Is the extension functionality, which can provide amazing services like Greasemonkey, really so limited that Pocket and Mozilla couldn't work together to write an extension that provides an indistinguishable experience?)

brighteyes 11y ago
From other comments here, it sounds like data shows that this one is good for users. You can argue that other extensions might help, but this one has had an actual investigation done proving its benefit.
- JadeNB 11y ago
  It seems likely that there are lots of other extensions that would also pass the bar of "users" (even 'lots of users'!) "like it in tests". (Also, not to be nit-picky but because I think it's an important distinction, I don't think the investigation here "proved its benefit", but rather showed only that those users tested liked it. I suspect every designer would agree that bundling everything a user wants leads, almost paradoxically, to an unuseable mess.)
  - azakai 11y ago
    There might be more. But tests are time-consuming and can't be done on everything. Also, the number of addons you want to preinstall has to be quite small - past a certain limit, it's too much clutter in the UI, as you correctly said (and indeed the number is very tiny: Pocket, Hello, and Search if you count that). Given the data available, Firefox is a better browser with Pocket than without, on average, for Firefox users. That's justification for bundling it. Perhaps more data will be collected and other addons might be considered later, but again, the bar gets higher and higher since the total number has to remain small.

addicted 11y ago

This is making a mountain of a molehill. Pocket like functionality is an integrated and expected feature of every browser today. Mozilla decided that instead of making the effort to reimplement this (efforts which are better redirected towards stuff like finally completing per tab processes), they would integrate the most popular extension that was being used for this functionality. Pocket does not immediately gain any info about the user until the user explicitly opts in. Mozilla certainly needs to be more transparent about how these companies are selected, and the way this information is first presented to the user. And they have acknowledged they did it poorly with both Telefonica and Pocket, and are looking to improve. But it is in no way an abandonment of their core principles by any stretch of the imagination.

sjun 11y ago
Can you point out which other major browsers integrate a feature like Pocket?
- girvo 11y ago
  Safari's Reading List, no?
  - leonatan 11y ago
    Neither Safari nor IE's reading mode sends or shares any data with a third party entity. If you know differently, please share to the contrary.
- ethana 11y ago
  IE11 has a reading mode since Windows 8 I think. The replacement Microsoft Edge browser will also include it. Firefox for Android actually had its own 'reading list' for a while too. Won't be long until Pocket will be on Firefox for Android by default if this is their direction.

slowmovintarget 11y ago

Interesting that it's disabled by default in the Developer's Edition.

gruez 11y ago
Makes sense. Developers aren't receptive forced addons.

hysan 11y ago

For everyone saying "Customize" this and opt-out/in that. Why not just have Pocket be a pre-installed add-on? That sounds like a compromise that would satisfy both camps and fit in with the Firefox philosophy.

JadeNB 11y ago
I think this is a very good point, and I agree! For what it's worth, in the response quoted by meesterdude (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876221), Mozilla said: > Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible. I don't know why (or whether) this direct integration makes such a difference compared to providing it as an extension, or even what is 'best' about it (fastest? Easiest? Most consistent?), but that's what they said. EDIT: On the other hand, mburns (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467) quotes another reply where Mozilla seem to agree with you.

omouse 11y ago

If you don't like Pocket, get more people to use the Sync feature instead or help build out Sync to do what Pocket does. To get to free/open source sometimes you have to start with proprietary software and progressively move over.

ams6110 11y ago
I don't want either one.
- pessimizer 11y ago
  That's not allowed. You must want one, because Chrome has one. You must want everything that Chrome has; that's why you use Firefox.
pmontra 11y ago
I'd use Sync with my own server but Firefox on Android is not good enough (rendering is too slow, font inflation sub par, etc) so I don't have anything to sync with. I'm using Opera on my phone and my tablet. Opera doesn't sync with personal sync servers so I'm not syncing between them too.

shmerl 11y ago

Does Mozilla make any money on it? Why would they bundle a non FOSS service into the browser, enabled by default with that?

zobzu 11y ago
yes, albeit i bet its negligible compared to the yahoo search deal
rockdoe 11y ago
Like Google or Yahoo search you mean? Probably because people find it useful.
- pessimizer 11y ago
  > Like Google or Yahoo search you mean? Including those has provided most of Firefox's revenue, so they're the worst possible examples.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    No, they're great examples: most people find search useful and don't object to it, even if it brings Mozilla revenue and if it has privacy implications.

joshmn 11y ago

Time for an open-source pocket clone. I'll start the API.

zobzu 11y ago
interestingly - firefox nightly for android has a "reading list" and no pocket which is .. basically pocket on top of firefox sync... also has a nicer integration and its pretty simple.. i dont even..
- brighteyes 11y ago
  As said in other threads, firefox/mozilla decided to stop developing their own in-house similar feature, and to collaborate with the existing and apparently better pocket.
jshwlkr 11y ago
https://github.com/zhy0216/random-read https://github.com/zhy0216/random-read

bdcravens 11y ago

I use Pocket, and am pretty happy with it. However, this bundling may cause me to eye it more critically now.

nacs 11y ago

There's a (currently) 178 response thread for this bundleware in the Mozilla "governance" forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.governance/2PYq2w8tejs/i_IindFDxxgJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.governance/2PY...

hiou 11y ago

When I first heard about this all I could think was "Wow, Mozilla must be having some really serious money concerns right now" I've been a huge Mozilla fan for a long time(I'm typing this on my Firefox OS phone) but this is all starting to feel really hopeless.

rockdoe 11y ago
As has been pointed out dozens of times in this thread, Mozilla didn't get any money from the integration. Although indirectly they of course save engineering salaries from not building the feature themselves.

phantom_oracle 11y ago

This is what happens when you have a tightly-coupled "NPO" that needs to use creative means to fund their organization. Mozilla is not exactly light-weight anymore and they have major expenses these days, which means they either need to go cap-in-hat and beg YaGoogFace or tell users that user-interest is still core, whilst integrating "sponsored" plugins deep into the browser. This is no different to getting "free" software on MS back in the 2000s, at the expense of having to install that shitty ask.com toolbar. Privacy and security really seems to be becoming more of a fallacy on the internet now.

Manishearth 11y ago
No. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla_is_not_benefiting_from_the_pocket/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla...
- vultour 11y ago
  So Mozilla said that isn't the case. The NSA also said they aren't spying on American people. You really believe everything you see?
  - Manishearth 11y ago
    IIRC Mozilla needs to open up their sources of revenue at the end of the year anyway because of nonprofitness or whatever (at least, they do do it), so they'd have to disclose it later.
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2013/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2013/ There's some lag in those appearing, though.

cddotdotslash 11y ago

Everyone saying "oh, just right click and remove it; it's so easy" is entirely missing the point. The simple fact is, Mozilla took a third-party, proprietary service and bundled it into the browser. If this becomes the new norm, imagine downloading Firefox v53 and having six different services installed (all consuming memory, collecting personal data, etc.) all because some research studies they collected said "people like this." Sure, every subset of the population is going to like different services. When I download Chrome, I install PushBullet, Disconnect, the Chromecast extension, and Ublock. But that doesn't mean that every other users wants or even needs those same things. The entire purposes of add-ons is that they can be... added onto the default experience. Mozilla has now begun changing the default. While they may claim this was done "purely for the benefit of users," it sure smells like it was done for money. EDIT: for anyone who doesn't think it wasn't about money, please explain why it is so difficult to remove, why I have to open about:config to "disable" (not remove) it, and why it wasn't just added as an add-on (which already existed)?

throwaway2048 11y ago
Sure is funny how a little bit of cash goes a long way to ensuring something is for the benefit of the user.
- emn13 11y ago
  [citation needed].
brighteyes 11y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467 they will do that, but it takes more effort i guess.
21echoes 11y ago
> (all consuming memory, collecting personal data, etc.) the integration does not collect personal data until the user opts in, and it does not consume memory beyond loading the image from disk until the user opts in. meanwhile, that search bar up at the top is an integrated browser function (not even an add-on) that sends personal data to a 3rd party, closed source server. > please explain why it is so difficult to remove you remove it just like every other thing in your toolbar: click the menu button, drag it off of the toolbar. > Mozilla has now begun changing the default like when they added bookmarks, search, download menu, spaces, and countless other functions? that's literally what browser vendors do.

endtime 11y ago

I know it's beside the point, but Pocket is actually a great product and I actively use it in Chrome and Android.

nefitty 11y ago

Firefox < Opera < Chrome, in terms of performance and business choices...

Animats 11y ago

On top of this, Firefox for Android now demands access to your contacts list. The browser itself has no need for your contacts list. But Mozilla Sync and Pocket do.

rockdoe 11y ago
Is that in Nightly? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-firefox-android-use-permissions-it-requests https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-firefox-android-use... Doesn't list that permission. I see no reason why Pocket or Sync would require that permission, although Hello likely does.
eveningcoffee 11y ago
Thank you for pointing out this possible problem. Must keep eyes open. It is disappointing that it is necessary.
rockdoe 11y ago
Actually, it seems to be to implement the "Contacts API": https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=857730 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=857730 https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1d77c3062662 https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1d77c3062662 Note that it's only enabled in Nightlies with no plans to ship.
Animats 11y ago
Actually, it's access to "Your accounts" that Firefox for Android now wants. That's for "Sync", or so they say. A browser shouldn't have access to your accounts. That opens up a big attack surface.

rockdoe 11y ago

I find it interesting that he considers Firefox getting H264 support as "the browser getting worse and worse". I don't like patented codecs either but there's no argument that making Firefox actually work with pretty much any video website out there is making it better, especially as they fought tooth and nail and only caved in when it was a foregone conclusion that H264 won out. It's easy to see why Mozilla doesn't listen to people like him. (And the tl;dr doesn't seem to agree with what's actually in the documents either)

throwaway7767 11y ago
> I find it interesting that he considers Firefox getting H264 support as "the browser getting worse and worse". The issue, at least for me, is that the browser now downloads binary blobs behind my back. Therefore it is no longer an open-source browser, unless I patch it and build my own version to disable this stuff. Firefox being open-source was one of the big selling points originally. Of course it's very convenient that video just works. User-experience wise it's just better. Noone is arguing that. > It's easy to see why Mozilla doesn't listen to people like him. Yes. It's completely understandable, the market for people who don't care about these issues is much larger. The reason many people are annoyed is because the free-software tech crowd used to be the target consumer for mozilla, that's the group that built the brand and the goodwill around it. Now they're turning around and using that goodwill to get new markets, while saying "screw you" to the people who built the brand for them. All the power to them, it's just sad for us old users watching this ship burn. I'm hoping a new project will spring up that picks up the torch and focuses on being an open-source, privacy-preserving browser.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  The issue, at least for me, is that the browser now downloads binary blobs behind my back... Firefox being open-source was one of the big selling points originally. OpenH264 IS open source. Firefox downloads a pre-built binary (that happens to have a patent license included), just like it'll do if you update, for example, Debian Iceweasel. The reason many people are annoyed is because the free-software tech crowd used to be the target consumer for mozilla It still is, but only the people who are willing to be reasonable and listen to arguments. Demanding that a browser in 2015 does not support H264 is not realistic. I mean, there's people arguing here that the current Sync system is a sell-out because it uses passwords instead of the old randomly generated keys. If I see that, and the H264 argument, then I think there's two kinds of "open source communities": the ones that try to build usable products and a big circklejerk that is happy to have a solution only for themselves. If you follow the discussions about ANY kind of open source project that tries to help the mainstream, you'll often see the same pattern. (GNOME and systemd are some easy examples)

eveningcoffee 11y ago

Wth Mozilla.org??? Do we have to create a fork due to your jerky moves? Better get rid of stuff like this.

tgb 11y ago

I have a Pocket account and use their bookmarklet when I want to save something for later reading on my tablet or phone. That should be reasonably private (apart from what I obviously send to them), correct?

gorgak 11y ago

ever since an ad appeared on my firefox ive been looking for something else. tried vivaldi but its based on google code, and i dont support google either. hard to know where to turn next.

ChildOfChaos 11y ago

Honestly who cares... this is not important to your life. People are always looking at reasons to be angry. Grow up.

hollerith 11y ago
Firefox is important to the web, and the web is important to our civilization.
ryanolsonx 11y ago
It is very important to the open web. People expect more from Firefox because they state what they stand for. See here https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/. Integrating a proprietary service into Firefox is contrary to this.