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How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

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Re: How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

#31

Post by jxcl »

shock wrote: post #29
ve55 wrote: post #19

These things do not belong in Firefox. Firefox should be a standalone web browser that focuses on security, privacy, efficiency, and customization. Not Chome+Social Media 2.0.

I probably would have agreed with you in the past, but not anymore. Here's why: I was having coffee with a friend today and he mentioned he was thinking about opening a facebook account – here's the kicker: the reason he wanted to get a FB account was the news feed; he wanted to be able to subscribe to people's pages and get updates when they post something new. I mentioned RSS; he was flabbergasted. He didn't know s…

On my version (60.0.2), I can click the hamburger menu on the right side of the address bar, click customize... and there's a "subscribe" button with the RSS logo that can be dropped onto the address bar or the overflow bar.

Re: How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

#32

Post by Fnoord »

stefan_ wrote: post #25
Fnoord wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people (and, organizations) are not allowed to learn from their mistakes Big Brother is an even more scary thing for our youth than it already is.

But they don't learn. They keep running head-first into these obvious blunders. Then they write a contrite sounding blog post, change nothing, and do it again a year later. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12441519

Yes, Mozilla made mistakes (I think you mentioned the biggest ones), but they also did things right. Every of these mistakes was solved. Firefox OS was solved as well; it got us Servo/Quantum. The question is do you forgive their mistakes, or what is your alternative? The most popular browser, Google Chrome, is still worse when it comes to privacy.

Re: How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

#33

Post by KwanEsq »

shock wrote: post #29
ve55 wrote: post #19

These things do not belong in Firefox. Firefox should be a standalone web browser that focuses on security, privacy, efficiency, and customization. Not Chome+Social Media 2.0.

I probably would have agreed with you in the past, but not anymore. Here's why: I was having coffee with a friend today and he mentioned he was thinking about opening a facebook account – here's the kicker: the reason he wanted to get a FB account was the news feed; he wanted to be able to subscribe to people's pages and get updates when they post something new. I mentioned RSS; he was flabbergasted. He didn't know s…

It's hidden away now, you have to open the "Page Info" window, available most-readily from the page's context menu, then go to the Feeds tab, select a feed and hit the subscribe button that appears, and it'll take you to the feed itself, where Fx shows its subscription interface (which you can get to directly if the page is helpful enough to provide its own link to the feed, as I think WordPress used to do by default in its meta links section back in the day).

However there's a distinct possibility said subscription interface will go away in future. (Whether or not the list of feeds in Page Info would go away at the same time is less clear)

Re: How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

#34

Post by abrowne »

chalkandpaste wrote: post #24

I disabled everything from Pocket I possibly can when I downloaded and setup Firefox, in the `about:config`. That integration annoys me to no end. Who decided I needed pocket in my browser?

I do the same, but it's not for us (who know about:config exists).

Re: How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

#35

Post by twblalock »

Every time Mozilla does something like this, or a promotion like the Mr. Robot thing, they remove a differentiator between Firefox and Chrome.

Mozilla is making it easier to think thoughts like this: If Firefox is just as bad as the other browsers, you might as well use the most popular one.

Re: How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

#36

Post by twblalock »

Fnoord wrote: post #21
jes5199 wrote: post #7

I tried to switch back to Firefox, but my password manager (lastpass) doesn’t work correctly, I guess the new extension APIs are too restrictiy. So, Chrome it is.

That's Firefox fault? Bitwarden works perfectly fine with the latest FF.

If I want to use LastPass (or any other popular extension), and it does not work in a particular browser, I don't care whose fault that is -- I won't use that browser.

If Firefox is going to regain any of its former glory, it needs to be easy for people to switch to without making sacrifices.

Re: How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

#37

Post by xg15 »

shock wrote: post #29
ve55 wrote: post #19

These things do not belong in Firefox. Firefox should be a standalone web browser that focuses on security, privacy, efficiency, and customization. Not Chome+Social Media 2.0.

I probably would have agreed with you in the past, but not anymore. Here's why: I was having coffee with a friend today and he mentioned he was thinking about opening a facebook account – here's the kicker: the reason he wanted to get a FB account was the news feed; he wanted to be able to subscribe to people's pages and get updates when they post something new. I mentioned RSS; he was flabbergasted. He didn't know s…

> he wanted to be able to subscribe to people's pages and get updates when they post something new.

Yes, but even this feature would be more like a traditional browser: A service-neutral, "dumb" feature where the user is directly in control. Not in an abstract marketing sense but literally: A user subscribes to a page and will get all events from tha page in predicatable order.

The "news feed" as implemented by Facebook and envisaged by Pocket is something completely different. You "subscribe" to pages alright. But this is simply a hint that gets fed into a curation algorithm. What you then see is a selected subset of events from your subscribed pages, in addition to "related" content and content the algorithm things you might find interesting. The algorithm used is of course constantly being changed and optimized towards a metric you probably don't even know. In short, with that kind of system, the user is very much not in control.

> I came home and investigated – the option to "subscribe to page" when the page has an RSS feed is gone from Firefox, or at least I couldn't find it.

Apologies for being cynical, but I'm not surprised. I'll be bold and assume that you can make money with curated feeds (or letting other people try out their curation algorithms on your userbase) but you can't make money with RSS.

Re: How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

#38

Post by twblalock »

chalkandpaste wrote: post #24

I disabled everything from Pocket I possibly can when I downloaded and setup Firefox, in the `about:config`. That integration annoys me to no end. Who decided I needed pocket in my browser?

I wish they would remove the feature. People who really want Pocket can install an extension.

Re: How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

#39

Post by danso »

shock wrote: post #29
ve55 wrote: post #19

These things do not belong in Firefox. Firefox should be a standalone web browser that focuses on security, privacy, efficiency, and customization. Not Chome+Social Media 2.0.

I probably would have agreed with you in the past, but not anymore. Here's why: I was having coffee with a friend today and he mentioned he was thinking about opening a facebook account – here's the kicker: the reason he wanted to get a FB account was the news feed; he wanted to be able to subscribe to people's pages and get updates when they post something new. I mentioned RSS; he was flabbergasted. He didn't know s…

I thought RSS feeds weren't available for Facebook entities (users/friends, pages, groups, etc)?

Re: How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook

#40

Post by Fnoord »

twblalock wrote: post #36
Fnoord wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's Firefox fault? Bitwarden works perfectly fine with the latest FF.

If I want to use LastPass (or any other popular extension), and it does not work in a particular browser, I don't care whose fault that is -- I won't use that browser. If Firefox is going to regain any of its former glory, it needs to be easy for people to switch to without making sacrifices.

It needs to be easy and clear for developers to port their extension. Ie. good documentation. Whether it is or not, I don't know.

It feels unfair if you blame only Mozilla for your issue though. It only seems to be that way because Mozilla changed something. But developers knew well in advance about this change.

If Photoshop doesn't work on the latest Windows version, do you blame Microsoft or Adobe? It'd depend on the nature of the issue but generally Microsoft allows developers to plan ahead.

Why did an extension like Bitwarden (a one man project) get their shit together while LastPass (with a big corp like LogMeIn behind it) not? If it were the other way around, I'd have understanding. Also, Bitwarden is open source, cheaper than LastPass (half the price if you want 2FA), you can even run the cloud backend locally if you prefer, and you can convert from LastPass (its only a CSV IIRC).

This comment on LastPass support forums sums it up: "I have had this submitted as a trouble ticket for almost a month now ... support simply sucks"

[1] https://forums.lastpass.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=296945&star...

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