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Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

(support.mozilla.org)
1222 points phantomathkg | 7 comments | 22 May 25 16:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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segphault ◴[22 May 25 17:45 UTC] No.44064599[source]▶
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 readability doesn't align with their new direction.

I'd probably be applauding the decision to shut this down if I thought they were doing it to free up resources to increase their focus on the browser, but Mozilla seems to be institutionally committed to chasing its own demise, so I'm sure they will instead focus on AI integration and other stuff that nobody asked for.

Meanwhile, Firefox is still missing proper support for a bunch of modern web features like view transitions and CSS anchor points that are available in every other browser.

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1. fkfyshroglk ◴[22 May 25 18:58 UTC] No.44065461[source]▶
> A product that's designed to strip ads from content for readability doesn't align with their new direction.

Interesting. I saw it as a glorified bookmarking service and saw the readability concerns as what raised red flags for me: mozilla just inherently isn't interested in competing on value rather than on marketing.

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2. nimbius ◴[22 May 25 19:20 UTC] No.44065724[source]▶
the internet is no longer designed to be readable.

it is designed to be profitable.

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3. laweijfmvo ◴[22 May 25 19:22 UTC] No.44065736[source]▶
they really went out of their way to include as many "Why" sections and links as possible without saying a single word about why.
4. Henchman21 ◴[22 May 25 20:40 UTC] No.44066697[source]▶
Its also no longer designed for users, but for the advertisers and bots.
5. Multicomp ◴[22 May 25 21:41 UTC] No.44067412[source]▶
They killed off the live bookmarks feature that I still miss in favor of this and it was never the same.

My rss feeds are still around from then. Glad I didn't invest in this fad.

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6. fkfyshroglk ◴[22 May 25 23:19 UTC] No.44068203[source]▶
Yea, but that matters less than you think in this context as what I want (a bookmark service for bookmarks) matters a lot less than how the service is marketed and funded.
7. fkfyshroglk ◴[22 May 25 23:21 UTC] No.44068213[source]▶
There is still no solid way to persist RSS feeds (...especially the content they actually refer to) to private storage. Any serious archiving service today will need to undertake snapshotting a website as it stands without relying on such sickly, secondary signals.

...but where RSS is reliable, yes, it's amazing.