Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#21

Post by serf » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

mouse_ wrote: post #4

One less thing to disable and hide on every new installation is a win.

that's what I thought. I was against the integration and had to make efforts ever since that inappropriate cash-grab. Glad to see it's dead.

I wish Mozilla would find the funding to stick to being a good browser rather than this current phenomena of waiting to see what the next shitty thing they do to the software is.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#22

Post by chimeracoder » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

_def wrote: post #18

> Your export file will include links (URLs) of your saved items. The export does not extract the text of saved links. Additionally, the export does not contain tags or highlights. boo! without the tags, the links will be mostly useless for me. Every now and then I thought aboyt switching to some self-hosted solution. Should've done it sooner... and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again.

> and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again.

Who will you trust? Google? Apple? Microsoft? It's not like any of the other behemoths have a better track record when it comes to long-term maintenance and availability of hosted consumer products. If anything, Mozilla actually has the best track record out of them all when it comes to long-term offerings.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#23

Post by wenbin » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

One issue I've had with read-it-later apps is that I end up accumulating far too many articles and never actually reading them. Now my approach is simple: if I see something I want to read, I either read it immediately or never.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#24

Post by poisonborz » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

Saving links and offline reading is dime a dozen nowadays, but the one BIG feature was recommended articles, which basically opened the reading list of the world and you could read extremely interesting longform articles based on your list. It was the best magazine you could imagine. But I guess it required maintenance and moderation so they axed it - in the typical fashion of an acquired product I might say.

I still wish for something like this with privacy in mind and community maintained.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#25

Post by sureste » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

Everytime people talked about Mozilla or Firefox the main complaint was Pocket. Everytime. Yet most people here are sad to see it go. What gives?

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#26

Post by walterbell » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #22

_def wrote: post #18

> Your export file will include links (URLs) of your saved items. The export does not extract the text of saved links. Additionally, the export does not contain tags or highlights. boo! without the tags, the links will be mostly useless for me. Every now and then I thought aboyt switching to some self-hosted solution. Should've done it sooner... and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again.

> and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again. Who will you trust? Google? Apple? Microsoft? It's not like any of the other behemoths have a better track record when it comes to long-term maintenance and availability of hosted consumer products. If anything, Mozilla actually has the best track record out of them all when it comes to long-term offerings.

> Who will you trust?

Your-self-hosted?

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#27

Post by xnx » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #22

_def wrote: post #18

> Your export file will include links (URLs) of your saved items. The export does not extract the text of saved links. Additionally, the export does not contain tags or highlights. boo! without the tags, the links will be mostly useless for me. Every now and then I thought aboyt switching to some self-hosted solution. Should've done it sooner... and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again.

> and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again. Who will you trust? Google? Apple? Microsoft? It's not like any of the other behemoths have a better track record when it comes to long-term maintenance and availability of hosted consumer products. If anything, Mozilla actually has the best track record out of them all when it comes to long-term offerings.

> Who will you trust? Google?

Google has very good/complete Takeout data for most of its services.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#28

Post by catlover76 » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #22

_def wrote: post #18

> Your export file will include links (URLs) of your saved items. The export does not extract the text of saved links. Additionally, the export does not contain tags or highlights. boo! without the tags, the links will be mostly useless for me. Every now and then I thought aboyt switching to some self-hosted solution. Should've done it sooner... and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again.

> and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again. Who will you trust? Google? Apple? Microsoft? It's not like any of the other behemoths have a better track record when it comes to long-term maintenance and availability of hosted consumer products. If anything, Mozilla actually has the best track record out of them all when it comes to long-term offerings.

[dead]

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#29

Post by wenbin » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

wenbin wrote: post #23

One issue I've had with read-it-later apps is that I end up accumulating far too many articles and never actually reading them. Now my approach is simple: if I see something I want to read, I either read it immediately or never.

There could be a better system (for me): a read-it-later app with a strict limit—say, 3 or 5 slots. If it's full and you add a new article, the oldest one gets automatically deleted to make room. That way, you always have something to read, but never feel overwhelmed by an endless backlog.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#30

Post by kstrauser » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

Crap. My Kobo Libra supports Pocket as its only built-in way to get articles onto the device. I use GoodLinks to store links I like, and have a Shortcut that copies new articles from GoodLinks to Pocket. If I’m reading something interesting but long, I bookmark it, and that evening it’s on my ereader waiting for me.

It’s a nice setup. I’ll miss it. There’s not a great replacement, either. Even if I create a GoodLinks-to-epub pipe or something, now all those articles will be mixed in with my books and magazines. I don’t want to have to pick through a hundred random articles to find the next book I want to read.

Mozilla, hear me out: what if, just what it, you drop some of the AI stuff you’re blowing cash on that people who use Firefox often actively dislike? Could you shave a percent off that and use it to fund Pocket instead?