Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#561

Post by simianparrot » Fri, May 23, 2025, 5:31 AM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #450

plorkyeran wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't use Pocket then the acquisition was bad because they spent a bunch of money buying an unrelated company to add a feature you don't want. If you do use Pocket then the acquisition was bad because you don't want to be relying on a weird side project of a company because they'll do a terrible job of maintaining it and it'll inevitably get shut down.

> they spent a bunch of money buying an unrelated company to add a feature you don't want While fiddling (and paying their execs $$$) as the only useful thing they do -- firefox -- crashed and burned into irrelevance. Leaving the company useful only as an ersatz chrome hypothetical competitor to keep the feds / EU at bay. Great for the overpaid people running it; less good for anyone in our industry. Exec pay: up and…

People really don’t like your comment it seems but you’re right, even if it’s a little on the nose.

I think most people wish it wasn’t true, myself included, but how many times does Mozilla have to show us their priorities are anything but improving and maintaining Firefox itself before we accept the truth?

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#562

Post by randomor » Fri, May 23, 2025, 5:36 AM UTC

rsaz wrote: post #553

randomor wrote: post #226

Wow, after Instapaper went back to indie from Pinterest[1] and Omnivore closing last year this is no longer surprising. This is also proof that read-it-later app as a category is not sustainable as a venture / company backed service. This is also a category of app that I believe could be better served by local-first native apps. As there is no reason why a server has to be requirement to enjoy the full service. Your…

Your app looks great, I love when apps make good use of iCloud syncing. If you don't mind me asking, what's your plan for monetization? I'm considering moving over from Raindrop.io, but am a bit worried about basic features ending up behind a subscription.

My plan is to keep everything free and work on value generating features that will focus on organization and consumption. Think of it this way, most features we have so far are just making it easy to capture, which is just step one. The users are giving us a chance to keep their content. We don’t really generate any value until they later search it or consume it. I’m hoping to align to that value.

Practically speaking, I’m planning to keep existing features free with no limits. I’ll be working on these truly value generating features with a bit more limits at a fair price so it can sustain the development.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#563

Post by anonzzzies » Fri, May 23, 2025, 5:38 AM UTC

flkiwi wrote: post #377

renegat0x0 wrote: post #121

There are a ton of bookmarking software, and good, and self-hosted. - karakeep - grimoire - omnivore - wallabag - linkwarden I myself use RSS reader / bookmark manager that I wrote [1]. Everything is open source. Even data [2] [3]. Links [1] https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive [2] https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database [3] https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database

Don't forget Readeck. I've been super pleased with it. (Omnivore is dead btw.)

Omnivore is open source, bit weird people insist on open source because 'future proof' and then when the commercial entity disappears, it's 'dead'. Why do people make their own instead of making an entity around what is already there if it was liked and open? Very much a validation for not open sourcing anyway. But then again, I cannot possibly use Obsidian or so because when they sell the place (not if, when), sure I have the open format, but not the nice tooling. I rather struggle with inferior open source products and contribute on those than having to go through these 'Google bought us, you have 2 months to export your data' kind of thing.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#564

Post by dgoldstein0 » Fri, May 23, 2025, 5:38 AM UTC

twilo wrote: post #415

mikemcg0 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree on search being abysmal - I'm surprised that none of these readings apps realized that the right approach to this space is building an aggregator and solving discovery/search for all writing on the internet. perch.app is the newest entrant to this space, and it's the closest I've seen to getting this right.

Best alt other than perch? For whatever reason I can’t get it to show up in the share/send menu on iOS and doesn’t seem to have a browser extension. How do you send articles to it?

I recently started using wallabag. Seems to do the job decently

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#565

Post by masylum » Fri, May 23, 2025, 5:49 AM UTC

I've been building a pocket alternative that also bundles an RSS editor (RIP google reader) and a light blogging platform.

The idea is basically to bundle the saving, discovering and sharing content through the same product. I've been using it for a year and it works beautifully.

https://fika.bar

And you can see my bookmarks/posts here: https://fika.bar/blogs/paoramen

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#566

Post by I_AM_A_SMURF » Fri, May 23, 2025, 5:50 AM UTC

Teever wrote: post #560

whyenot wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their reckoning day is coming when Google stops paying them $500m+ a year to be the default search engine. That payment alone account for 80% of Mozilla's budget, and has made them fat, wasteful, and directionless. It's really upsetting to me personally, I gave a lot (time, code, and money) to Mozilla in the early days when they were really struggling.

Does anyone know if Mozilla has built up an endowment/trust fund type thing that will allow them to operate without further revenue from an entity like Google?

Last I checked they have some money from the Yahoo settlement. But nowhere near something they can use to operate in perpetuity.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#567

Post by eviks » Fri, May 23, 2025, 5:52 AM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #170

Ugh, and that only months after Omnivore (a really great FOSS "read it later" app) shut down. The one constant of "save your favorite articles and websites offline, forever" apps seems to be that they're... very much not forever. In my view, this not being a native, interoperable feature of web browsers is a failure of the web. I'll be able to listen to a podcast episode I've downloaded as an MP3 forever, and the sam…

You'll be able to read an article you save locally forever as well, that's the easy part

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#568

Post by RazvanS » Fri, May 23, 2025, 5:55 AM UTC

masylum wrote: post #565

I've been building a pocket alternative that also bundles an RSS editor (RIP google reader) and a light blogging platform. The idea is basically to bundle the saving, discovering and sharing content through the same product. I've been using it for a year and it works beautifully. https://fika.bar And you can see my bookmarks/posts here: https://fika.bar/blogs/paoramen

By any chance, are you also working on a Firefox extension?

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#569

Post by gnulinux » Fri, May 23, 2025, 5:58 AM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #170

Ugh, and that only months after Omnivore (a really great FOSS "read it later" app) shut down. The one constant of "save your favorite articles and websites offline, forever" apps seems to be that they're... very much not forever. In my view, this not being a native, interoperable feature of web browsers is a failure of the web. I'll be able to listen to a podcast episode I've downloaded as an MP3 forever, and the sam…

I just Ctrl+P print the reader mode output to PDF. Takes 1 second. I've been doing it for years and it works perfectly. I have articles I saved from a decade ago in Dropbox. I'm honestly surprised people use a whole app for such a trivial feature, but yeah it's fair to have special needs. For me, Firefox reader mode is all I need, and you can just save it as PDF.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#570

Post by bambax » Fri, May 23, 2025, 6:00 AM UTC

segphault wrote: post #71

I was a user for so long that I was on it before it even rebranded as Pocket. I finally gave up on it last year, mostly due to frustration with the terrible 2023 redesign of the mobile app. When Mozilla made the unfathomable decision to become an internet advertising company, I figured it was just a matter of time before they had to put Pocket out to pasture. A product that's designed to strip ads from content for re…

> mostly due to frustration with the terrible 2023 redesign of the mobile app

That's a classic move: make it bad / observe that nobody uses it anymore / close it. Sometimes it's done on purpose, sometimes not, but the result is always the same.