7 ms·

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 n

by 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
        its shady because its promoting a closed source, for profit entity that has control over user's browsing data.
        azakai 11y ago
        This is similar to integrating with a search provider, which all browsers do, for better or for worse. And all search providers are closed source and for-profit: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, etc.
        throwaway2048 11y ago
        however the precidence of selecting a closed source search provider already exists and is a strong expectation (this was something championed largely by firefox to begin with, as an interesting sidepoint) There is no expectation of an integrated closed source "cloud reader" and attempts to paint this like "aww gee shucks it would be great it we could do something about this but thats just the way they world is" come off as extremely disingenious, especially as the mobile version of firefox had this feature baked in with no reliance on any third party at all.
      - ObviousScience 11y ago
        > It's quite similar to other browser integrations. "Online advertisements with active content aren't shady, almost all networks use them!" Except for course, what you said it's identical are a notoriously shady group of activities, which has led to much abuse my market leaders at various times (Google, Microsoft), and we see no difference here. For that matter, neither do you. I get that Firefox benefits from shipping the integration, but you haven't provided any good technical reasons for it not being fundamentally a shift in the way you do business and kind of exploitative. Holding up a bunch of famous exploitations as "me too!"ing is tonedeafly missing the complaint.
        azakai 11y ago
        Maybe I am not following you. Are you saying that browser integrations with google, bing, etc. are all shady?
  - foiboitoi 11y ago
    That still doesn't explain why firefox has to be marketing for the Read it Later company. Why even bother having extensions if Mozilla going to pick and choose for you?
    - pmontra 11y ago
      My first reaction was that Read it Later is paying Mozilla for that tight integration but it's not true. Check this 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... "this has absolutely nothing to do with money. We're shipping Pocket because we love their product, and so do our users. Pocket is, by very far, the most popular reading-list add-on used with Firefox." Apparently they went too far: it's the most popular extension of that kind among people that care about reading lists (hardly the majority I think) and it's being hated by everybody that don't tolerate imposed choices. No good can come for Firefox and Pocket from this. If I were Pocket I'd ask Mozilla to unbundle the code into an extension as soon as possible because this is starting to be a PR backslash.
      - vacri 11y ago
        They had a win with the Hello chat stuff, which is backed by Telefonica. It's understandable that they might have tried another item in the same vein (regardless of underlying good v bad motiviation).
      - IshKebab 11y ago
        I'm not sure that is a denial. "[Us including pocket] has nothing to do with money." Could also mean "We like pocket enough to include it, but they are also paying us."
  - JadeNB 11y ago
    Wouldn't "decide on first run" (i.e., the user is queried if, say, `browser.pocket.firstRun` is set to `true`) address both issues (of users who don't want to be opted in automatically, and of users who wouldn't discover it if it were opt-in only)?
    - azakai 11y ago
      I'm afraid not, because for the average user, who understands very little about software, asking them "do you want [complex new feature]?" is almost always going to get a "no". And even if it isn't an actually complex new feature, it sounds that way to them. It's true that this seems perhaps a little silly to people like us. We might prefer this to be opt-in. But we are a rare type of user. Studies show the best decision here is to bundle it by default.
      - JadeNB 11y ago
        > Studies show the best decision here is to bundle it by default. I believe that there are meanings of 'best' for which this is true, but they aren't, I think, necessarily the right ones. In this case, it seems like 'best' is "best for widespread adoption of Pocket". OK, so let's buy that widespread adoption of Pocket is a good goal because more users like it than don't. I'm sure there are lots of add-ons with this property, but we don't add them all on—so what is so special about this one, beyond just that it tested well, and moreover what is so fundamental about it that it has to be integrated at the browser, rather than extension, level?
        azakai 11y ago
        This might also be good for Pocket, but I don't think that had anything to do with Firefox's decision. Why would it?
        JadeNB 11y ago
        I think that I was unclear. When I said "best for widespread adoption of Pocket", I meant just that: Mozilla have decided, after gathering data, that Pocket is a service that is good for users, and they want as many people as possible to use it. I did not mean to suggest that this was an attempt by Mozilla to promote Pocket for Pocket's sake.
  - throwaway2048 11y ago
    how many non-techies are ever even going to push that button and use it? I'd bet single digit percentages.
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      Just like most features, right. There's actually a tour of it if you do a fresh update on a release build, IIRC.
  - omouse 11y ago
    This. It's like everyone wants Firefox to look like version 1. Seriously guys, there are great features like reader mode which people don't know about. There's a sync mode that people apparently aren't using (I know about it and even I haven't set it u, but I do have Pocket installed) The Firefox design team needs to test these things out. If y'all don't like it stick to Iceweasel or some other fork. Just don't expect much innovation from the forks.
  - frozenport 11y ago
    >>hat a significant amount of people like the feature So what? Consider this argument: 80% like a feature 20% don't. You implement it, now 20% of the people aren't happy. Next feature is also 80%/20%, now between 36-20% aren't happy. Keep doing this and you will alienate most of your user base. Did anybody actually want this feature? What percentage was that?
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      You can also never implement anything and then suddenly you have no more users because the competition has all the features. I'm pretty sure that was Mozilla's experience until they switched to rapid release.
  - lemevi 11y ago
    With that logic they could add the Ask Toolbar and make it opt-out too because otherwise far fewer people would benefit from it. Clearly adding pocket wasn't in the interest of users, but only Mozilla's. I doubt adding pocket by default into Firefox was even a thing anyone asked for. And why Pocket? Maybe some Firefox users use Instapaper, and they had no say in the choice of Pocket.
  - vultour 11y ago
    You're spewing so much PR bullshit in this thread it's fucking ubelievable. Why exactly a useless thing like this? Why aren't other, way more useful addons like AdBlock in by default? I tell you why - because you, and your friends in the "research" department are being paid for this.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  Because that's how surveillance-as-a-business-model[1] works[2]. The industry that brought us the "EULA" just loves to try to force contracts on people, especially when it tricks the user into giving up even more data. It starts as a useful product until the network-effects take over and raise the cost of leaving, de facto locking people in. After they are hooked, you introduce various types methods to make the product rely more on remote services instead so more data can be captured. As few people understand the difference between a product that runs locally and a service that necessarily gives your data over to a 3rd party, this usually works without anybody noticing and objecting. If a few nerds object, they are usually countered with a few lies about why such a service is "necessary", even when it isn't. In this case, the lie is that a 3rd party service is necessary so you can share your bookma^H^H^H^H^H^Hreading list on different devices (which assumes you have multiple devices, and that you want to move bookmarks between them). In hard cases, it may require some vague, misleading, and hard-to-prove statistics ("our data says user's like $foo", "everybody uses $foo"), or simply browbeating anybody that complains ("Then submit your own patches", "stop being paranoid"). The worst part is that for many of the engineers involved, this is probably unintentional. The human mind has a very limited "working set" that is given full attention; everything else is filtered heavily with various shortcuts[3], heuristics, and assumptions, making it incredibly easy to be distracted by endless technical details. TL;DR - watch [2] for a much better explanation [1] aka "big data" and sometimes "analytics" [2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#balkan https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... [3] most illusions and magic tricks are based on this - Apollo Robbin even bases his entire show on working just outside the focus-set of his audience ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0k2gja3ym4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0k2gja3ym4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d54ydsKUNGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d54ydsKUNGw )
  - astrobe_ 11y ago
    [2] needs subtitles for every language on the planet.
  - emn13 11y ago
    A more plausible explanation is that that's the only way people discover new functionality. Prediction: it won't be the default eventually (after people get used to the idea that they can easily pick and choose sharing services https://activations.cdn.mozilla.net/en-US/ https://activations.cdn.mozilla.net/en-US/ to show).
- sp332 11y ago
  It is opt-in. If you don't sign up for a Pocket account, nothing happens.
shmerl 11y ago
You can also disable it in about:config, but the icon still stays in the reader view (that's a bug).
zobzu 11y ago
removing it from view doesn't actually remove pocket - in fact you just have to click the hamburger menu and click pocket.. ooh its still here ;-)
- gear54rus 11y ago
  When in dragging mode, there's an area on the left which kinda removes it from burger as well :)
  - zobzu 11y ago
    well, yes, you're right - its still there tho :|
    - burnte 11y ago
      Yes, but inactive, doing nothing, not using a single cycle.
silverwind 11y ago
Better yet, disable it in about:config through browser.pocket.enabled. Should save some CPU cycles too.
- Manishearth 11y ago
  It won't. Firefox features are lazy loaded; so if it's dragged off the customizeable UI it's got zero footprint until you drag it back. Actually, it's got very less footprint until you click it.
morganvachon 11y ago
Maybe that's all you have to do to have it not track your activity, maybe not. Maybe disabling it in about:config and setting all the strings related to it to "null" is enough to keep it from tracking you; again, maybe not. Either way, it's a shitty thing for Mozilla to do, just as it was a shitty thing for Google to sneak in code in Chromium that downloads and installs proprietary blobs after compilation and packaging. The list of truly open web browsers keeps getting smaller.
- coldpie 11y ago
  There is no "maybe" about it. It's open source. If you don't interact with the button, then nothing will be sent to a third party or tracked. You can remove the button and disable it entirely if you want, but at no point will anything be sent or tracked if you don't click the button. > The list of truly open web browsers keeps getting smaller. What are you talking about?
  - morganvachon 11y ago
    > What are you talking about? I'm talking about what the author of the article pointed out. Did you read the article? "Non-free software-powered. You want to host your own instance? You can't. Also, you can't modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or create any derivative works based on the Pocket Technologies, including any of its files, tables or documentation, or any portion thereof, or determine or attempt to determine any source code, algorithms, methods or techniques embodied in the Pocket application or any portion thereof. Yes, this service is integrated in your favourite Open-source web browser."
    - coldpie 11y ago
      So don't use Pocket. The web browser itself, including its integration with Pocket's public API, is all open source.
      - morganvachon 11y ago
        I think I'll choose not to use Firefox anymore. Google swiftly reversed their bad decision to include a silent binary blob downloader, but I didn't go back to Chromium because that trust was broken. What I mean is, it's not so much about open source (I used closed source technology every day), it's about the overall openness of the project. Mozilla has chosen to integrate a proprietary service in what is supposed to be an open browser, and that bothers me enough to not use their product anymore. And if it's not already apparent, no, I won't be using Pocket either. :)

by burnte 11y ago

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
      its shady because its promoting a closed source, for profit entity that has control over user's browsing data.
      - azakai 11y ago
        This is similar to integrating with a search provider, which all browsers do, for better or for worse. And all search providers are closed source and for-profit: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, etc.
        throwaway2048 11y ago
        however the precidence of selecting a closed source search provider already exists and is a strong expectation (this was something championed largely by firefox to begin with, as an interesting sidepoint) There is no expectation of an integrated closed source "cloud reader" and attempts to paint this like "aww gee shucks it would be great it we could do something about this but thats just the way they world is" come off as extremely disingenious, especially as the mobile version of firefox had this feature baked in with no reliance on any third party at all.
    - ObviousScience 11y ago
      > It's quite similar to other browser integrations. "Online advertisements with active content aren't shady, almost all networks use them!" Except for course, what you said it's identical are a notoriously shady group of activities, which has led to much abuse my market leaders at various times (Google, Microsoft), and we see no difference here. For that matter, neither do you. I get that Firefox benefits from shipping the integration, but you haven't provided any good technical reasons for it not being fundamentally a shift in the way you do business and kind of exploitative. Holding up a bunch of famous exploitations as "me too!"ing is tonedeafly missing the complaint.
      - azakai 11y ago
        Maybe I am not following you. Are you saying that browser integrations with google, bing, etc. are all shady?
- foiboitoi 11y ago
  That still doesn't explain why firefox has to be marketing for the Read it Later company. Why even bother having extensions if Mozilla going to pick and choose for you?
  - pmontra 11y ago
    My first reaction was that Read it Later is paying Mozilla for that tight integration but it's not true. Check this 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... "this has absolutely nothing to do with money. We're shipping Pocket because we love their product, and so do our users. Pocket is, by very far, the most popular reading-list add-on used with Firefox." Apparently they went too far: it's the most popular extension of that kind among people that care about reading lists (hardly the majority I think) and it's being hated by everybody that don't tolerate imposed choices. No good can come for Firefox and Pocket from this. If I were Pocket I'd ask Mozilla to unbundle the code into an extension as soon as possible because this is starting to be a PR backslash.
    - vacri 11y ago
      They had a win with the Hello chat stuff, which is backed by Telefonica. It's understandable that they might have tried another item in the same vein (regardless of underlying good v bad motiviation).
    - IshKebab 11y ago
      I'm not sure that is a denial. "[Us including pocket] has nothing to do with money." Could also mean "We like pocket enough to include it, but they are also paying us."
- JadeNB 11y ago
  Wouldn't "decide on first run" (i.e., the user is queried if, say, `browser.pocket.firstRun` is set to `true`) address both issues (of users who don't want to be opted in automatically, and of users who wouldn't discover it if it were opt-in only)?
  - azakai 11y ago
    I'm afraid not, because for the average user, who understands very little about software, asking them "do you want [complex new feature]?" is almost always going to get a "no". And even if it isn't an actually complex new feature, it sounds that way to them. It's true that this seems perhaps a little silly to people like us. We might prefer this to be opt-in. But we are a rare type of user. Studies show the best decision here is to bundle it by default.
    - JadeNB 11y ago
      > Studies show the best decision here is to bundle it by default. I believe that there are meanings of 'best' for which this is true, but they aren't, I think, necessarily the right ones. In this case, it seems like 'best' is "best for widespread adoption of Pocket". OK, so let's buy that widespread adoption of Pocket is a good goal because more users like it than don't. I'm sure there are lots of add-ons with this property, but we don't add them all on—so what is so special about this one, beyond just that it tested well, and moreover what is so fundamental about it that it has to be integrated at the browser, rather than extension, level?
      - azakai 11y ago
        This might also be good for Pocket, but I don't think that had anything to do with Firefox's decision. Why would it?
        JadeNB 11y ago
        I think that I was unclear. When I said "best for widespread adoption of Pocket", I meant just that: Mozilla have decided, after gathering data, that Pocket is a service that is good for users, and they want as many people as possible to use it. I did not mean to suggest that this was an attempt by Mozilla to promote Pocket for Pocket's sake.
- throwaway2048 11y ago
  how many non-techies are ever even going to push that button and use it? I'd bet single digit percentages.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    Just like most features, right. There's actually a tour of it if you do a fresh update on a release build, IIRC.
- omouse 11y ago
  This. It's like everyone wants Firefox to look like version 1. Seriously guys, there are great features like reader mode which people don't know about. There's a sync mode that people apparently aren't using (I know about it and even I haven't set it u, but I do have Pocket installed) The Firefox design team needs to test these things out. If y'all don't like it stick to Iceweasel or some other fork. Just don't expect much innovation from the forks.
- frozenport 11y ago
  >>hat a significant amount of people like the feature So what? Consider this argument: 80% like a feature 20% don't. You implement it, now 20% of the people aren't happy. Next feature is also 80%/20%, now between 36-20% aren't happy. Keep doing this and you will alienate most of your user base. Did anybody actually want this feature? What percentage was that?
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    You can also never implement anything and then suddenly you have no more users because the competition has all the features. I'm pretty sure that was Mozilla's experience until they switched to rapid release.
- lemevi 11y ago
  With that logic they could add the Ask Toolbar and make it opt-out too because otherwise far fewer people would benefit from it. Clearly adding pocket wasn't in the interest of users, but only Mozilla's. I doubt adding pocket by default into Firefox was even a thing anyone asked for. And why Pocket? Maybe some Firefox users use Instapaper, and they had no say in the choice of Pocket.
- vultour 11y ago
  You're spewing so much PR bullshit in this thread it's fucking ubelievable. Why exactly a useless thing like this? Why aren't other, way more useful addons like AdBlock in by default? I tell you why - because you, and your friends in the "research" department are being paid for this.
pdkl95 11y ago
Because that's how surveillance-as-a-business-model[1] works[2]. The industry that brought us the "EULA" just loves to try to force contracts on people, especially when it tricks the user into giving up even more data. It starts as a useful product until the network-effects take over and raise the cost of leaving, de facto locking people in. After they are hooked, you introduce various types methods to make the product rely more on remote services instead so more data can be captured. As few people understand the difference between a product that runs locally and a service that necessarily gives your data over to a 3rd party, this usually works without anybody noticing and objecting. If a few nerds object, they are usually countered with a few lies about why such a service is "necessary", even when it isn't. In this case, the lie is that a 3rd party service is necessary so you can share your bookma^H^H^H^H^H^Hreading list on different devices (which assumes you have multiple devices, and that you want to move bookmarks between them). In hard cases, it may require some vague, misleading, and hard-to-prove statistics ("our data says user's like $foo", "everybody uses $foo"), or simply browbeating anybody that complains ("Then submit your own patches", "stop being paranoid"). The worst part is that for many of the engineers involved, this is probably unintentional. The human mind has a very limited "working set" that is given full attention; everything else is filtered heavily with various shortcuts[3], heuristics, and assumptions, making it incredibly easy to be distracted by endless technical details. TL;DR - watch [2] for a much better explanation [1] aka "big data" and sometimes "analytics" [2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#balkan https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... [3] most illusions and magic tricks are based on this - Apollo Robbin even bases his entire show on working just outside the focus-set of his audience ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0k2gja3ym4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0k2gja3ym4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d54ydsKUNGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d54ydsKUNGw )
- astrobe_ 11y ago
  [2] needs subtitles for every language on the planet.
- emn13 11y ago
  A more plausible explanation is that that's the only way people discover new functionality. Prediction: it won't be the default eventually (after people get used to the idea that they can easily pick and choose sharing services https://activations.cdn.mozilla.net/en-US/ https://activations.cdn.mozilla.net/en-US/ to show).
sp332 11y ago
It is opt-in. If you don't sign up for a Pocket account, nothing happens.

shmerl 11y ago

You can also disable it in about:config, but the icon still stays in the reader view (that's a bug).

zobzu 11y ago

removing it from view doesn't actually remove pocket - in fact you just have to click the hamburger menu and click pocket.. ooh its still here ;-)

gear54rus 11y ago
When in dragging mode, there's an area on the left which kinda removes it from burger as well :)
- zobzu 11y ago
  well, yes, you're right - its still there tho :|
  - burnte 11y ago
    Yes, but inactive, doing nothing, not using a single cycle.

silverwind 11y ago

Better yet, disable it in about:config through browser.pocket.enabled. Should save some CPU cycles too.

Manishearth 11y ago
It won't. Firefox features are lazy loaded; so if it's dragged off the customizeable UI it's got zero footprint until you drag it back. Actually, it's got very less footprint until you click it.

morganvachon 11y ago

Maybe that's all you have to do to have it not track your activity, maybe not. Maybe disabling it in about:config and setting all the strings related to it to "null" is enough to keep it from tracking you; again, maybe not. Either way, it's a shitty thing for Mozilla to do, just as it was a shitty thing for Google to sneak in code in Chromium that downloads and installs proprietary blobs after compilation and packaging. The list of truly open web browsers keeps getting smaller.

coldpie 11y ago
There is no "maybe" about it. It's open source. If you don't interact with the button, then nothing will be sent to a third party or tracked. You can remove the button and disable it entirely if you want, but at no point will anything be sent or tracked if you don't click the button. > The list of truly open web browsers keeps getting smaller. What are you talking about?
- morganvachon 11y ago
  > What are you talking about? I'm talking about what the author of the article pointed out. Did you read the article? "Non-free software-powered. You want to host your own instance? You can't. Also, you can't modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or create any derivative works based on the Pocket Technologies, including any of its files, tables or documentation, or any portion thereof, or determine or attempt to determine any source code, algorithms, methods or techniques embodied in the Pocket application or any portion thereof. Yes, this service is integrated in your favourite Open-source web browser."
  - coldpie 11y ago
    So don't use Pocket. The web browser itself, including its integration with Pocket's public API, is all open source.
    - morganvachon 11y ago
      I think I'll choose not to use Firefox anymore. Google swiftly reversed their bad decision to include a silent binary blob downloader, but I didn't go back to Chromium because that trust was broken. What I mean is, it's not so much about open source (I used closed source technology every day), it's about the overall openness of the project. Mozilla has chosen to integrate a proprietary service in what is supposed to be an open browser, and that bothers me enough to not use their product anymore. And if it's not already apparent, no, I won't be using Pocket either. :)