Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#101

Post by reaperducer » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #26

chimeracoder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Your-self-hosted?

Only if you're among the .0001% of people who can code it yourself. Otherwise, nothing is different; you're always relying on someone else for their software, feature, security, and compatibility updates.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#102

Post by marconey » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

I was a very heavy pocket user and loved it, but around 2019 they changed their Discover tab, so you could no longer see the source of the article.

The pages were listed as ‘Pocket’ source, and they windowed the original article in a pocket page with ads

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#103

Post by aspenmayer » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:56 PM UTC

poisonborz wrote: post #70

aspenmayer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be able to scrape archive sites or create search queries that you use to determine fresh or trending archives or domains?

I think it's really hard to replicate the "people save this article for later" pedigree without actually having this information.

True, there are a lot of bots that use Internet Archive, which is probably the easiest to scrape. Maybe ask Jason Scott of Archive Team if he has any ideas for how to use IA and other archives for this purpose, and for ideas about how else to get this data?

I think Instapaper was another solution in this space that may have the info you want.

Maybe ask on some data hoarder subreddits about how to find new content that’s relevant to your interests with existing social proof?

I can see how the data from Pocket would have made that a lot easier for you, but finding a quick solution may be difficult. I think Apple News has a bit of social components around surfacing popular content, but that is not the same as user generated content indicating interest in a specific site, which is your goal.

Are you familiar with MetaFilter? There a community that might have some insight into your question, as they’re like HN but somewhat more crunchy and broadly less technical, but very human. Asking around other communities, you might find some suggestions.

Please let me know if you find a solution because this is an interesting problem, and I would probably be just as interested in the solution.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#104

Post by dlojudice » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

testfrequency wrote: post #19

Super bummed about this. I know a surprising number of high profile CEOs and founders who live by Pocket, really has just been quietly reliable and simple way to reserve content for later. Despite there being so many other $apps that can fill the gap here, none of them seem to be as clean and straightforward as Pocket has been for me. Anyone here paying for Matter or Readwise? I know Instapaper may seem to be the obv…

> Anyone here paying for Matter or Readwise? I know Instapaper may seem to be the obvious migration path, but since my landlord is kicking me out, maybe it’s time I move to a more robust solution.

I'd love to know where to migrate my Pocket data. The funny thing is that I had "Migrate Pocket" on my calendar for June 30th.

And are you serious that the exported data doesn't have the tags? Really?

I wonder how a database like this has no value, especially with the customization power brought by AI. Didn't Mozilla think about selling the product?

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#105

Post by littlestymaar » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#106

Post by JohnFen » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

sureste wrote: post #25

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?

Different groups of people.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#107

Post by duck » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

sambaumann wrote: post #99

_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.

anyone have any good suggestions for a self-hosted option?

I've been using https://github.com/sissbruecker/linkding and highly recommend it.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#108

Post by walterbell » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #101

walterbell wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who will you trust? Your-self-hosted?

Your-self-hosted? Only if you're among the .0001% of people who can code it yourself. Otherwise, nothing is different; you're always relying on someone else for their software, feature, security, and compatibility updates.

Are we on Hacker News?

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#109

Post by zimpenfish » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

poisonborz wrote: post #24

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…

> the one BIG feature was recommended articles

The TWO BIG features were recommended articles and integration with IFTTT. I think, of the suggested alternatives, only Instapaper has IFTTT integration (modulo setting up a local webhook).

Given I have multiple things per day (and have for 10+ years) going into Pocket, this is going to be a big pain in the arse to deal with.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#110

Post by dustincoates » Thu, May 22, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

dlojudice wrote: post #104

testfrequency wrote: post #19

Super bummed about this. I know a surprising number of high profile CEOs and founders who live by Pocket, really has just been quietly reliable and simple way to reserve content for later. Despite there being so many other $apps that can fill the gap here, none of them seem to be as clean and straightforward as Pocket has been for me. Anyone here paying for Matter or Readwise? I know Instapaper may seem to be the obv…

> Anyone here paying for Matter or Readwise? I know Instapaper may seem to be the obvious migration path, but since my landlord is kicking me out, maybe it’s time I move to a more robust solution. I'd love to know where to migrate my Pocket data. The funny thing is that I had "Migrate Pocket" on my calendar for June 30th. And are you serious that the exported data doesn't have the tags? Really? I wonder how a databas…

I exported my data, and tags were there.