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.

Pocket was always among the first things I disabled when setting up Firefox and apparently, I wasn't the only one doing that.... I'm sure it had its users but I always found normal bookmarks to be more convenient.

Never even heard of Fakespot, though.

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 (https://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.

edit: this post isn't a request for advice, I'm very happy with my current Wallabag setup.

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

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.

From the 404media article on the subject:

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!

This shift allows us to shape the next era of the internet – with tools like vertical tabs

T  o  I
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F  h  r
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YES! No more Pocket button sticking out like a sore thumb!

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.

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.

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

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.

https://wallabag.org/

“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

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 Am*z*n 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...

Nobody cared to use Pocket so its not surprising, btw what was that Fakespot thing?

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.

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

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? With a web UI and not self hosted?

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.

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

Idiots. Buying a perfectly good service just to shut it down. I wonder if they even bothered looking for a buyer.

Also that new logo with the flag sucks.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Count me in the group of people sad to see it go because it made it very easy to get articles onto my Kobo e-reader. There are other ways, but they're all too labour intensive to be practical. Probably should have seen the writing on the wall, though.

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

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.

Everything good to halfway decent must die on the alter of cost cuts, but nevermind and never notice that they're investing all of the savings on dubious junk like AI.

Really disappointed to lose Pocket. I am a big user of it and found it very convenient to save articles of interest as well as collecting anything that looked interesting that I might want to read. Have both the Android app and use it on the desktop.

Now I'm going to have to find a substitute.

Why don't they just open it up to let people run their own Pocket services? The usual "proprietary code" excuses make no sense for an organization like Mozilla and it's being end of lifed anyway. Just dump it on a repo somewhere and let people hack on it if they want to. Why isn't this part of the sunsetting plan?

Pocket is one service of theirs I did use from time to time. Save an article you want to read later without committing it to a bookmark.

Good.

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!

part of me thinks "great, those things were annoying"

another part of me thinks it's a harbinger

Shutting down two things that had no business being built in their browser, to replace them with more stuff that have no business being built in their browser.

Mozilla really embraced the "corporation must corporate" motto.

Mozilla should fire their non-technical staff, strongly make the case for how they're fighting for a free and open internet, and use a subscription model for Firefox to pay the bills

Finally! I couldn't wait for Pocket to shut down. One useless icon less in my Firefox.

The real Pocket is the Google money they made along the way.

Mozilla has tried so many things: I wonder if anyone there has considered releasing and maintaining a browser. They might have some luck against Chrome.

Good, I never used pocket and I never heard of the other thing.

Good. I've been disabling this shit in about:config for one decade too many.

Is this cause of the money they lost from the google thing?

I wanted to like pocket, but I never really understood the point of it when I was already using Reddit or Google News to curate what I liked to read about. Was it more privacy oriented?

An recommendations for Pocket-Alternatives? I save articles on my phone and desktop and read on my tablet…

Well no one likes or asked for pocket as far as I know so good riddance.

FF is technically backed by GOOGLE advert money.

fuck, I'm using the Pocket plugin a lot :[

not for proper bookmarking, just to mark where I was in longer videos and webcomics, 1 click on/off, easy

shame about pocket - wonder how much of a hole that really burned in their pocket - if much

Mozilla! Stop doing stupid stuff!

Welp, guess I better start up the calibre extension to send pocket articles as a file for ebook readers.

I try to support Mozilla (and more obscure open source projects we take for granted) through donations and subscriptions. But I never used Pocket or Fakespot.

I don’t think it should be a forced payment but I’d pay a few bucks a month for a true developer edition. The current one is essentially just the early beta for extension developers but something really developer focused with no bullshit and developer tools at the forefront. I don’t know if that’s something other people would pay for but I feel like it’s easier to shell out cash when I’m using it for work. A lot of people could probably expense it.

It likely wouldn’t replace the Google money but it’d be a start.

I never used Pocket itself, but I do like having the grid of news articles on the new tab page, which I believe is powered by Pocket in some shape or form. Anyone know if that feature is going away too?

i literally JUST installed fakespot lol

I hope they don't remove Mozilla accounts too, I have all my bookmarks and sync between devices there. Zen browser that I use relies on this and I assume other browsers based off Firefox do too. Mozilla does not have a good managing team and they deserve to go down but there should be a transition period.

was fakespot ever available outside the us?

Bummer. I can see pocket going, I tried to use it but it’s basically a place to put stuff that you plant to but never actually get around to reading, a bookmark does the same thing. Fakespot I’m not sure about. I’ve used it, but there’s no way to verify how right it is.

I hated it at first but then I started to leave pocket on and click links every now and then since I figured they got revenue out of it. I don't use it often but its a shame to see it go now that I kind of like it.

Mozilla shouldn't have bought FakeSpot

i used pocket once, and after several steps to activate it, i realized that it was not at all what I thought it was going to be and never touched it again

They're likely moving to focus on Thundermail.com, VPN, calendar, private cloud storage, etc.. Like Proton Mail does.

Good, they should exclusively focus on Firefox.

Good riddance.

These companies need to stop pushing 'features' nobody cares about and then complaining they need more funding.

How about Firefox syncing collections between mobile and desktop? Then we wouldn't NEED Pocket to begin with! 🤷

Oh fuck the Kobo reader suddenly became more useless now.

Well, I guess I’m getting the opera or Vivaldi app, whatever that browser out of Europe is called. Or is it Brave or something, I forget.

Pocket goes hand in hand with procrastination.

Fakespot was what finally convinced my wife to leave chrome. Fuck these fuckers.

funny. if you point out what sucks about moz before they tell it to their fanbase you're banned. but after moz announced it everbody goes like yeah good decision. the user/fan base has become the top reason to not use FF.