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.

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• FireWire400@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Pocket was always among the first things I disabled when setting up Firefox and apparently, I wasn’t the only one doing that… Never even heard of Fakespot, though.

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  • JTskulk@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Fakespot was kinda nice, whenever I looked at something on amazon I’d get a sidebar showing which reviews are real and summarizing them. It’s actually pretty useful. Definitely will not miss Pocket.

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    • danc4498@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Is camel camel camel still useful for Amazon?

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    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Fakespot became defeated years ago and became useless on Amazon.

      The best method I’ve had is to ignore any off brand looking product that’s been for sale for less than a couple months, but has tons of reviews, and when I pick something, sort the reviews by newest first and read those ones.

      Usually the most paid reviews and fake reviews are close to when a product first starts selling. If the thing has been for sale for a little while, odds are that the most recent reviews are mostly from real people. Also, sometimes they will sale a higher quality item the first few weeks it’s for sale, and then start selling the item with cheaper parts on the inside. Like earbuds with good innards getting swapped out for cheaper drivers and processors.

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    • bufalo1973@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I’ve found a better way to use Amazon: not using it and fuck you, Bezos.

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    • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      didn’t fakespot only work in the USA?

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  • orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I use Fakespot but wasn’t aware it was a Mozilla product.

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    • Tim_Bisley@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The bought it out. It was originally an extension.

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  • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Regardless of whatever it did or however it did it, the way Pocket was suddenly shoved in everyone’s faces by default definitely left a bad taste in a lot of mouths (including mine) and everybody just considered it more unasked-for adware. Especially since in its default configuration about a quarter of what it serves you is indeed flat out ads, when most of us are using Firefox with uBlock or similar specifically not to see ads.

    Pocket provided a feature I suspect few people actually used, and in the process had an obnoxious presentation that a lot of people actively disliked. Add me to the list of people who won’t be sad to see it go.

    I want my browser developer developing browsers, not other ancillary side projects.

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    • acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      well they are terminating it for a reason.

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  • GuyDudeman@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    OMG I JUST started using Pocket because my work banned Firefox and made us all switch to Edge!!

    Now how am I going to sync bookmarks and pages I want to read later on my personal devices??

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    • catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I generate a QR code and scan it with my phone. Don’t sync work and personal devices.

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    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’d be very tempted to install Firefox in my local appdata folders (which doesn’t require admin rights to install), then install a theme to make FF look like Edge with something like this..

      Still use real Edge browser for work stuff, but FF for less-than-work stuff.

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    • drspod@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If your work doesn’t care about your productivity then give them what they deserve for the tools they provide.

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    • Cossty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I forgot what it is called but there is an extension that syncs bookmarks between Firefox and Chromium browsers.

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    • ToffeeIsForClosers@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There’s Instapaper and once upon a time they even gave you an email address to send links into. Maybe they still do that.

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  • Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, me too. I hate that useless Pocket icon in the toolbar. It’s the first thing I disable on every Firefox installation.

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  • M137@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Bookmarks and services like pocket are for different things. Bookmarks are for websites you come back to often. Pocket and other services like it are for saving link to stuff you want to remember and/or come back to once or a few times. Bookmarks are not made for having thousands of, while “read later” services are for saving anything and easily have hundreds, thousands tens or hundreds of thousands of things saved.

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    • bufalo1973@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      “Read once bookmark”. Problem solved.

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  • killerscene@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    i used to use pocket all the time back in the day. slowly realized there arent many articles worth saving for later let alone reading at all.

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  • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I used to use Pocket a lot, it was my main way to read long form articles. I somehow stopped doing that years ago as a way to preserve my mental health. Since then I haven’t used Pocket once.

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  • tamal3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Didn’t some articles have the pocket icon, and some were without? I remember trying it a number of years ago and being completely flummoxed by not being able to save things I wanted to read. Though it could have been user error.

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• noodlejetski@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  bUt iT’S jUSt bOoKmARkS

  - people who are privileged enough to never have experienced multiple days without an internet connection.

  it’s a shame to see it go, it’s been the first read-it-later service that I was aware of and used. I’ve moved away to Omnivore (RIP) and then Wallabag (wallabag.it for 11€/year, but you can self-host it or find someone else to host it for you for a lower fee), but I’ve still been thinking fondly of it, despite Mozilla clearly trying to force people into social reading rather than just serve as a convenient offline storage of articles.

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  • TheBlackLounge@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why would you need a saas solution if it’s for offline reading? Seems like a contradiction

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    • noodlejetski@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      …so that you can read it on a device other than the one you’ve initially opened the link on? I can save a link to Wallabag from my laptop’s browser at home, have my e-readet sync it, and then read it offline while on a train.

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  • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Obsidian with the readitlater plugin is good, and actually stored in a standard format entirely on your devices, so truly offline.

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  • cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I have ended up using Zotero for this, which takes a snapshot of the webpage for offline reading (and preservation). Synced to other clients through my WebDAV server. Originally only used Zotero as a reference manager for academic journal papers, but liked using it more broadly.

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  • eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    people who are privileged enough to never have experienced multiple days without an internet connection.

    I have, and if you need an SaaS for that, I am sorry for you. Pocket was great for getting around paywalls for a while.

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  • acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    if you happen to be an apple person Safari’s Reading List can save pages offline.

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  • Artopal@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I hear you. I discovered Omnivore and was in the process of migrating from Pocket to it until less than a year later Omnivore was gone.

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    • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Same. I’ve done pocket and omnivore but now both dead :(

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  • aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ve heard good things about karakeep (also requires self hosting) github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep

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  • mac@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Check out LinkedIn for this

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  • cheese_greater@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    How does all this compare with something like Goodlinks?

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    • noodlejetski@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      well, for starters I can’t install Goodlinks on Linux, Android, or a jailbroken Kindle.

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• cascadia99@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I liked Fakespot. Amazon obviously doesn’t care whether reviews are legit.

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  • lemmyingly@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Fakespot has always felt inaccurate to me. Once every 6 months or so I gave it a go to see if any of the updates have improved it but it never felt like it did to me.

    Furthermore, I don’t see the point in Fakespot since Amazon bends over backwards to accept returns for any reason.

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    • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Furthermore, I don’t see the point in Fakespot since Amazon bends over backwards to accept returns for any reason.

      Why go through that hassle if you can avoid it in the first place?

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    • spector@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I stopped trusting it much when I noticed there’s a huge difference between the same product on amazon.ca and amazon.com. On one domain it can give something an F grade while on the other domain it will have an A grade.

      It’s a nice idea but when you think it about it’s actually kind of hard to determine the quality of a particular listing apart from the obvious checks you can do yourself. Like if the seller is some random drop shipper or actually Amazon or the manufacturer.

      Judging reviews with whatever AI system they use is not very accurate anyways.

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    • Empricorn@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Your 2nd point doesn’t make any sense. Sure, you can spend the time returning things. If they’re bad and you know they’re bad. But what if they’re just bad enough?

      Take guitar pedals, for example. I know nothing about guitar pedals. I don’t know the brands, I don’t know the features I should look for, what they should cost, nothing. A company can purchase thousands, tens of thousands, or more fake reviews from a bot farm run by wage slaves. I might buy their subpar pedal based on the good review score. It’s fine, it works well enough from my initial testing and doesn’t die…

      But what I wanted was to purchase one of the better ones, which the false reviews told me it was! I could have spent the same or less for a better product, that rewarded the company that made the superior product. And I might not even know it, at least until it’s too late to return. That’s (one of) the problems with how bad fake reviews have gotten.

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    • cascadia99@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’ve also wondered about Fakespot’s accuracy. I just viewed it as one tool when doing online shopping. I’d prefer not to order crap in the first place than try to return something later.

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  • dinckelman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I’ve never known about it until just now, but I wish I had, because my mom definitely needs something like that. Quite a shame

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  • Empricorn@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I think it’s a good tool. I also think people and companies learned how to circumvent it and avoid being too obvious. And that was before AI! Plus, Firefox (who I didn’t even know owned it before today!) doesn’t want to enough time/money into it in a perpetual arms race…

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• Majestic@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Never cared for pocket and always disabled it as spyware. Fake spot will be missed though.

  This is an ill omen however. They’re cutting back dramatically in anticipation of their Google funding being lost forever and perhaps as some suggest in anticipation of enshitifying. These were both sold originally as additional revenue streams for Mozilla.

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  • sheogorath@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I used to use it before it got acquired by Firefox to store my read it later list.

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  • zeppo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    they’re focusing on AI instead, it seems

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• lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The Distilled announcement post says the company made the choice to shut down these products because “it’s imperative we focus our efforts on Firefox and building new solutions that give you real choice, control and peace of mind online.” It also says the choice will allow Mozilla to “shape the next era of the internet – with tools like vertical tabs, smart search and more AI-powered features on the way.” Which is what everyone wants: more AI bloat in their browsers.

  (The monkey paw turns, and) we got our wish.

  We did, internet! We killed Pocket!

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• 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Owning things like Pocket is fine as long as each product stands on it’s own. Melding them together is what upsets their user base.

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  • 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    100%. And companies don’t seem to realize this. I’ll use fakespot, but there is absolutely no use for it to be an inbrowser app, and the fact that it suggests (pushes) the idea each time I use the website is just maddening. That said, I appreciate that service.

    Pocket can stay or leave. I don’t care one way or the other. I never understood its usecase.

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    • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      the fact that it suggests (pushes) the idea each time I use the website is just maddening

      I don’t think I’ve ever seen this suggestion. IDK where I clicked “STFU” but I only ever remember seeing something about it once.

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    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I never understood its usecase.

      I used to use it when I was browsing the web at work. If I was reading something at the end of the day, or if it was something I didn’t want to read at work, I’d give it a pocket bookmark. Then I could pull out my phone and finish right where I left off during my train commute.

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• pastermil@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  YES! No more Pocket button sticking out like a sore thumb!

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  • drmoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It literally takes 5 seconds to remove it.

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    • fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      No time, need to shit post

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    • Hugin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      But you can’t remove pocket from firefox just disable it. Given that it wa also a close source binary blob that made firefox not completely open source I’m glad it’s going.

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  • Mataresian@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Wasn’t it possible to remove that button?

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    • pastermil@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Possible: yes

      Convenient: no

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  • ptu@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    On Firefox? I’ve used it for years and this is the first time I hear of Pocket

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    • Alaknar@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      On Firefox? I’ve used it for years and this is the first time I hear of Pocket

      And then people get all pissy when Google or Microsoft show a pop-up of a new feature…

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• Piwix@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

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• CannedYeet@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Noo! I loved Pocket. It’s integrated into my Kobo eReader. It was the only good way to get articles easily synced on to an eReader. I hope Kobo buys Pocket. Or Rakuten, since that’s a tech company and they own Kobo.

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  • Tim_Bisley@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I used it extensively on my Kobo as well. So nice to be browsing on my phone and see long articles to read and just save them to enjoy on a nice eink screen later when I have time.

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  • EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    wallabag.org

    Supposedly Wallabag works Kobo readers. Most people self host Wallabag but I think they do have a hosted option as well.

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  • Empricorn@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Similarly, I used p2k.co (Pocket to Kindle). My use case was to clip things with Pocket, which would then automatically send them to my Kindle, where I prefer reading longer articles and books. Retroactively, kind of my fault for being an earlier adopter of a locked-down device like the Kindle from a massive corporation and never moving on from it…

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• Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Good. I never trusted those integrated apps and thought of them as spyware. Mozilla should go back to focusing on making a lean browser and whatever apps they want to offer should be optional instead of hard coded into their flagship product.

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  • Empricorn@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    To be fair, I think they both existed as separate products first, before Mozilla bought them. I used both, but they should have never been integrated as a part of a browser…

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• JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Pocket is the sort of shit that makes me embarrassed to recommend Firefox.

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• ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “Firefox is the only major browser not backed by a billionaire”

  This is a misleading statement. 86% of Mozilla’s funding is from google. Modern web browsers are a fucked landscape designed to perpetuate googles dominance

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• xiao@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  wallabag.org

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• Brewchin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Pocket won’t be missed. Self-hosted alternatives like Wallabag are better and private, so switched to it many years ago. Integration (and enabled by default, requiring about:config to disable) ensured I’d never use it out of principle.

  Fakespot (the website) was genuinely useful to help ID scams on Amzn Marketplace, though I never used the extension. But I think that enshittified in recent years, so (in the style of Stephen King’s Misery) it’s probably for the best.

  Related, the Keepa extension is useful as a price rigging detector, but I expect that will “number must go up!” soon enough, too…

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• cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Nobody liked Pocket so its not surprising, btw what was that Fakespot thing?

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• Artopal@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I use Pocket since before Mozilla bought it. In combination with my kobo ereader, it changed the way I read the Internet for the better. Self hosting is no option for me and as far as I know Pocket was the best free read-it-later service. And the only one that worked seamless with Kobo. I really hope Rakuten buys it.

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• DJDarren@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  As a Kobo user who sends articles to my Kobo via Pocket A LOT, this is some hefty bullshit.

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• mjhelto@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

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• TAG@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  As an occasional user, I am sad to see it go. Are there any other sites out there to maintain a list of links that I may find useful in the future?

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• SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Pocket was silly, just use tabs and buy more RAM.

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• kratoz29@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Wait, I didn’t know Mozilla actually owned Pocket, I thought they just had a partnership or something…

  I used to main Pocket back in the days when I had an iPod Touch 4G and older iPhone models, nowadays… It is storing articles from those days that I bet I haven’t gotten to read 😂

  Man, one gets a backlog of everything these days.

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• BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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

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• reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Idiots.

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• cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

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• IsaamoonKHGDT_6143@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why doesn’t Mozilla change or add the MIT license to Pocket?

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• zeppo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

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• NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I liked it at first until the recommendations became more-and-more advertorial slop.

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• aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Everything good to halfway decent must die on the alter of cost cuts, but nevermind everyone investing all of the savings on dubious junk like AI.

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• Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  pocket I never used. I found it ugly and just s violation of privacy as it moved a service that should be local only, to external webservers. I can see why it’s finally had the plug pulled

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• Bali@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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!

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