Pocket goes hand in hand with procrastination.
Mozilla is shutting down Pocket, their read-it-later and content discovery app, and Fakespot, their browser extension that analyzes the authenticity of online product reviews.
Submitted 10 months ago by Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/
Comments
Opacity9850@lemmy.world 10 months ago
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Pocket was silly, just use tabs and buy more RAM.
trepX@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
The point was to have stuff to read when no connection, such as airplane. Which browser doesn’t try to refresh the tab? Any setting that allows to cache to HDD on a mobile browser you know of?
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
It did that? That’s nifty. Maybe a little deliberate for me, personally, with my adhd, but I can see how that would be very useful. Kind’ve a bummer that’s gone, actually. Shoot. And there are no decent and trustworthy alternatives?
azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
You don’t need to. Modem browsers will suspend unused tabs, cache them on drive and free up the memory, while quickly restoring as soon user activate them. On at least moderately fast systems this happens so quickly it’s hardly noticeable.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
with that plus auto tab discard i can have plenty of tabs :)
noxypaws@pawb.social 10 months ago
great way to run into rate limits tho
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Bummer. I can see pocket going, I tried to use it but it’s basically a place to put stuff that you plant to but never actually get around to reading, a bookmark does the same thing. Fakespot I’m not sure about. I’ve used it, but there’s no way to verify how right it is.
yarr@feddit.nl 10 months ago
Mozilla has tried so many things: I wonder if anyone there has considered releasing and maintaining a browser. They might have some luck against Chrome.
Piwix@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Sad news, but trimming the fat is what people wanted Mozilla to do. Anyone know a good alternative to Fakespot? I absolutely don’t trust amazon’s own review summaries, and expect other alternatives would be for-profit data harvesters.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Is this cause of the money they lost from the google thing?
cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
Nobody liked Pocket so its not surprising, btw what was that Fakespot thing?
Vorticity@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I used fakespot a lot. It used huristics to attempt to determine how authentic a product’s reviews are. It analyzed the reviews for things like repeated phrases, odd review activity like bragading, and other things. It then gave a letter grade to the veracity of the reviews and an “adjusted” aggregate review score after removing any reviews that it considered to be suspicious.
I’m going to miss fakespot. I don’t know how accurate it was but it definitely informed my decisions.
ghostBones@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Alternative? 11Labs Reader will let you build an article library and will read them to you with superior voicing then pocket ever had.
MrMcGasion@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Fakespot was somewhat accurate at catching when Amazon sellers take a well-reviewed item and swap out the product for another, by changing the title, description, and pictures. We’ve probably all read a review on Amazon that feels like the reviewer is posting a review of a completely different product, like a review that seems to be about a kitchen utinsil on a listing for an unusually affordable camera. It’s a pretty common scam that Fakespot was pretty good at catching. It didn’t seem as good at adjusting ratings for legit products and seemed to kind of randomly knock off a a half to one and a half stars on pretty much every listing, even on quality products.
Little8Lost@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It tried to show how authentic a product review was
cant say if it was accurate or notSCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
I feel like that’s a critical function lmao
malin@thelemmy.club 10 months ago
Good riddance.
These companies need to stop pushing ‘features’ nobody cares about and then complaining they need more funding.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
well shit, i loved pocket. i guess time to make my own del.icio.us social bookmarking/saving app like i’ve been wanting to for years.
GeekFTW@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
Yeah I’ve been using pocket since it was Read It Later. I got shit in there going back about 15 years I guess I’ll be exporting and finally going through lmao.
asideofsalt@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I’ve been using raindrop.io for years now and highly recommend checking it out
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The moment I setup an Omnivore account, it gets acquired and dies, the moment I switch to Pocket it’s dead lol, I think I’ll just move to some open source self hosted read it later app like Karakeep
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No! Use your power for good! Switch to Facebook and X!
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I know what I need to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it!
JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
The real Pocket is the Google money they made along the way.
MITM0@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Is there like worker-owned alternative to Mozilla ?
Little8Lost@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You can use firefox forks like librewolf or zen or something
There are other smaller browsers but there you have the tradeoff that they dont have as many devsMITM0@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The company itself
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Good, they should exclusively focus on Firefox.
IhaveCrabs111@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And how they can monetize user data?
JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
They’re going to do that regardless.
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Welp, I’ve taught my parents to use the fakespot site before doing a purchase on Amazon. Fakespot was never a perfect tool, but it was easy to use and better than not checking review quality at all.
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
Good, I never used pocket and I never heard of the other thing.
mjhelto@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Switched to LibreWolf after seeing the message about Fakespot. It was a heavily used browser add-on I used almost religiously since 2020. Mozilla acquired them in 2023 and then did nothing with it, letting it die. I’m so tired of this bullshit.
malin@thelemmy.club 10 months ago
Is it free software?
Then anyone can make the improvements they want for it.
DJDarren@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
As a Kobo user who sends articles to my Kobo via Pocket A LOT, this is some hefty bullshit.
EySkibidiBabBab@feddit.dk 10 months ago
Yup, just got a Kobo and absolutely love the Pocket integration… I hope some alternative is implemented…
ratzki@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
An recommendations for Pocket-Alternatives? I save articles on my phone and desktop and read on my tablet…
keegomatic@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Just started using Linkwarden, been cool so far.
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Wallabag and Karakeep are popular open source apps
SulaymanF@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Instapaper is still going strong.
letsgo@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I tried pocket a couple of times but couldn’t get past the “we think you’re on a phone so you’re only getting three items on the screen at once”. Well I’m not on a phone, I’m on a desktop with a 32" monitor and three T-Rex sized items on my screen is just terrible design.
prototact@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
I hope they don’t remove Mozilla accounts too, I have all my bookmarks and sync between devices there. Zen browser that I use relies on this and I assume other browsers based off Firefox do too. Mozilla does not have a good managing team and they deserve to go down but there should be a transition period.
wewbull@feddit.uk 10 months ago
How can they sell your details if you don’t register for an account?
I’d personally much rather sync was done with no account. More like synching where clients connect directly to each other with a QR code (or cut&paste code)
JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
I’d prefer a self-hosted option. They could even do it the KeePass way where it just saves to a file and you’re responsible for syncing it.
kazerniel@lemmy.world 10 months ago
fuck, I’m using the Pocket plugin a lot :[
not for bookmarking, just to mark where I was in longer videos and webcomics, 1 click on/off, easy
burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 10 months ago
i used pocket once, and after several steps to activate it, i realized that it was not at all what I thought it was going to be and never touched it again
yournamehere@lemm.ee 10 months ago
funny. if you point out what sucks about moz before they tell it to their fanbase you’re banned. but after moz announced it everbody goes like yeah good decision. the user/fan base has become the top reason to not use FF.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 10 months ago
Pocket is the sort of shit that makes me embarrassed to recommend Firefox.
Bali@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The first paragraph is not true. Mozilla is backed by a billionaire or billionaires, for example Google and Microsoft where the majority of Mozilla revenues comes from them. Stop deceiving people!
Darkhoof@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They’re not billionaires. They’re corporations.
2910000@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Mozilla should fire their non-technical staff, strongly make the case for how they’re fighting for a free and open internet, and use a subscription model for Firefox to pay the bills
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Nobody is paying a subscription to use a browser they can get for free.
TonyOstrich@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Patreon and Wikipedia are things people pay for that they can get for free. I have long wanted a way to directly find Firefox development and sustainability.
2910000@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Enough internet users are familiar with the adage “if a product is free, you are the product”, through personal experience
I’d be OK with paying for Firefox if it meant that it was stripped of all association with advertisers. And presumably, if Mozilla were freed from that association, they’d be able to make a stronger case for how they’re protecting a free internet
zeppo@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I enjoy pocket for the articles that come up on the new tab page. I’ve never once saved an article for later with it.
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 10 months ago
I liked it at first until the recommendations became more-and-more advertorial slop.
SnortsGarlicPowder@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
I used it like 3 times before deciding my read later functionality is already and better served by the 206 tabs I will never look at.
gerowen@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Pocket is one service of theirs I did use from time to time. Save an article you want to read later without committing it to a bookmark.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Wish they’d make bookmark not suck so much that using them felt like a commitment to organisationnal chores. The bookmark system is largely unchanged since the netscape days.
You cant search texts inside bookmarks because they only store the url. Which will break. Instead of saving the html itself, as if we still only has hundreds of gigabytes.
It should have a library level search system, capable of not just symbol text but intelligent summarization, categorization, search by relecant, content discovery algorithm, rss feed support all fully local, offline capable.
The whole thing, metadata, html, inages, video, files, code, replay of the changes over time. Yes I should be able to replay clicking “read more” as I expand comments on facebook. I should not lose my work to a page reload ever again. And no that’s nor “too much space”. Web pages are largely text sent super efficiently it is not that much information even compared to a gigabyte.
bufalo1973@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Now imagine having google, bing, qwant, duck duck go and ecosia bookmarked.
mr_satan@lemm.ee 10 months ago
What you’re describing is so much more difficult from a technical standpoint than you give it credit.
Static pages – sure, the plague of single page applications – oof, that’s a challenge.
acockworkorange@mander.xyz 10 months ago
Fakespot was what finally convinced my wife to leave chrome. Fuck these fuckers.