Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

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podgietaru ◴[22 May 25 18:59 UTC] No.44065481[source]▶

I loved Pocket. I used it nearly daily. I was often in their top n% of users. I paid for it. Then one day they changed the way their rendering worked on iOS. And it destroyed my workflow.

I also bought a Kobo E-Reader specifically to use Pocket with it. In short order I found an open-source alternative - Omnivore - and spent my time hacking away at my Kobo to get it to pull from there instead. https://github.com/Podginator/KoboOmnivoreConverter

I think Pocket was amazing. I think the idea worked amazingly for someone like me, who is an enjoyer of reading, but had a hard time finding a moment to sit down and do it.

I am upset that Pocket is going. I am upset that Omnivore shut down. I am upset that my Kobo will probably remove that integration and thus ruin my Self-Hosted Omnivore's integration with it.

I think it could have been a lot, lot more.

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1. inanutshellus ◴[22 May 25 19:31 UTC] No.44065851[source]▶

>>44065481 #

Reading pro-Pocket comments is so surreal.

I never really paid any attention to Pocket and never used it but 100% of the comments I ever saw were about how it was some invasion of privacy tool that was evidence of corruption in Mozilla selling your data to 3rd parties or something.

Now it's dead and ... everyone here is mourning its passing. Guess I was a successful mark for anti-Mozilla FUD tactics.

replies(4): >>44065888 #>>44065906 #>>44065909 #>>44066258 #

2. podgietaru ◴[22 May 25 19:34 UTC] No.44065888[source]▶

>>44065851 (TP) #

I used Pocket since it was called Read-it-Later back in 2011/2010. It was one of the first things I'd install onto every device I owned.

I used it until their dreadful redesign in 2023.

I got a _lot_ of use out of Pocket.

replies(1): >>44065946 #

3. lxgr ◴[22 May 25 19:35 UTC] No.44065906[source]▶

>>44065851 (TP) #

My feelings are 30% annoyed (because I still have some data in there), 70% hopeful that a thoroughly mediocre contender is going a way and some more consolidation in this market might finally create critical mass for and focus on some open-source, data-exportable solution in the way Omnivore unfortunately couldn't.

4. hiccuphippo ◴[22 May 25 19:36 UTC] No.44065909[source]▶

>>44065851 (TP) #

I loved it when it was called read-it-later and was a standalone add-on. Requiring a Mozilla account made me stop using it.

5. lxgr ◴[22 May 25 19:38 UTC] No.44065946[source]▶

>>44065888 #

I've also used it for several years, but it really was never great compared to anything else in this space and seemingly stopped any feature development years ago.

The biggest problem for me was that they just completely gave up on paywalls, at a time when viable workarounds finally became widely available (e.g. iOS share sheet extensions being able to inject JavaScript into Safari to collect the content, which is what many alternatives do). Completely useless for reading paid news.

6. input_sh ◴[22 May 25 20:03 UTC] No.44066258[source]▶

>>44065851 (TP) #

I don't think anyone was opposed to Pocket-the-product, but its integration into Firefox.

I used it long before Mozilla purchased it and continued to use it for years after, but jumped ship because years went by without any updates to the product. IIRC it hasn't received a single update between approximately 2019 and 2021. It felt abandoned long before today.

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