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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.
i used to use pocket all the time back in the day. slowly realized there arent many articles worth saving for later let alone reading at all.
OMG I JUST started using Pocket because my work banned Firefox and made us all switch to Edge!!
Now how am I going to sync bookmarks and pages I want to read later on my personal devices??
I’d be very tempted to install Firefox in my local appdata folders (which doesn’t require admin rights to install), then install a theme to make FF look like Edge with something like this..
Still use real Edge browser for work stuff, but FF for less-than-work stuff.
They literally have control of and log every app that’s installed and will bug you until you uninstall it.
Unless they’re doing app signing or binary examination, some of the methods to “log every app” literally look for an executable name. Renaming “firefox.exe” to “explorer.exe” (an obviously allowed executable name) and then executing it will still run Firefox.
Yeah, I don’t know how they’re doing it. They’re using some “zero trust” system. It’s beyond me.
They are probably scanning for the binary file executable.
If your work doesn’t care about your productivity then give them what they deserve for the tools they provide.
There’s Instapaper and once upon a time they even gave you an email address to send links into. Maybe they still do that.
I forgot what it is called but there is an extension that syncs bookmarks between Firefox and Chromium browsers.
I generate a QR code and scan it with my phone. Don’t sync work and personal devices.
Fakespot was kinda nice, whenever I looked at something on amazon I’d get a sidebar showing which reviews are real and summarizing them. It’s actually pretty useful. Definitely will not miss Pocket.
Is camel camel camel still useful for Amazon?
Keepa is better, and depending on whether you’re conspiratorial, not compromised as 3Camels was accused of some years ago.
Compromised?
3Camels was, maybe still is, fully dependent on the Amazon affiliate program. A program that was reduced at one point, killed off 3Camels competitors, but not 3Camels. Then Amazon asked them to stop tracking during Covid for a time which they did.
This is around the time that I heard about Keepa which has a different model, not solely Amazon but other stores too, and not paid via affiliates program.
Also it’s just faster. 3Cs was getting super slow to notify. You’d get an email, click and surprise, that sale was over yesterday.
I probably heard about the controversy on Reddit at the time but there’s a chance I found this site here which covers some of my recollections.
Thanks!
Never heard of this. Sounds useful, except I’m really only buying something from them because I need it quickly most of the time. I don’t have the convenience of waiting for price drops like I do with Steam games haha. Thanks for sharing!
I’ve found it useful enough not too long ago, mostly for comparing Amazon’s pricing differences for identical products between various EU countries.
Yes CamelCamelCamel is still useful. I check it every time before a major purchase.
Fakespot became defeated years ago and became useless on Amazon.
The best method I’ve had is to ignore any off brand looking product that’s been for sale for less than a couple months, but has tons of reviews, and when I pick something, sort the reviews by newest first and read those ones.
Usually the most paid reviews and fake reviews are close to when a product first starts selling. If the thing has been for sale for a little while, odds are that the most recent reviews are mostly from real people. Also, sometimes they will sale a higher quality item the first few weeks it’s for sale, and then start selling the item with cheaper parts on the inside. Like earbuds with good innards getting swapped out for cheaper drivers and processors.
didn’t fakespot only work in the USA?
Never tried it outside of the USA, couldn’t tell ya.
I’ve found a better way to use Amazon: not using it and fuck you, Bezos.
based
I used to use Pocket a lot, it was my main way to read long form articles. I somehow stopped doing that years ago as a way to preserve my mental health. Since then I haven’t used Pocket once.
Didn’t some articles have the pocket icon, and some were without? I remember trying it a number of years ago and being completely flummoxed by not being able to save things I wanted to read. Though it could have been user error.
I use Fakespot but wasn’t aware it was a Mozilla product.
The bought it out. It was originally an extension.
still is as far as I know. I am using it.
Not for much longer
Yeah, me too. I hate that useless Pocket icon in the toolbar. It’s the first thing I disable on every Firefox installation.
Glad it’s gone for good.
Bookmarks and services like Pocket are for different things. Bookmarks are for websites you come back to often. Pocket and other services like it are for saving links to stuff you want to remember and/or come back to once or a few times. Bookmarks are not made for having thousands of, while “read later” services are for saving anything and easily have hundreds, thousands, even tens or hundreds of thousands of things saved.
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“Read once bookmark”. Problem solved.
Regardless of whatever it did or however it did it, the way Pocket was suddenly shoved in everyone’s faces by default definitely left a bad taste in a lot of mouths (including mine) and everybody just considered it more unasked-for adware. Especially since in its default configuration about a quarter of what it serves you is indeed flat out ads, when most of us are using Firefox with uBlock or similar specifically not to see ads.
Pocket provided a feature I suspect few people actually used, and in the process had an obnoxious presentation that a lot of people actively disliked. Add me to the list of people who won’t be sad to see it go.
I want my browser developer developing browsers, not other ancillary side projects and certainly not “curating content” or whatever the fuck.
I would not be at all surprised to learn that Pocket costs Mozilla a nontrivial amount of money and manpower to maintain, what with doing all that curation and all, and provides them bupkis in return.
well they are terminating it for a reason.
Nobody cared to use Pocket so its not surprising, btw what was that Fakespot thing?
It tried to show how authentic a product review was
cant say if it was accurate or notI feel like that’s a critical function lmao
Unfortunately hard to verify, plus its technically still an opinion written in code by someone.
I used fakespot a lot. It used huristics to attempt to determine how authentic a product’s reviews are. It analyzed the reviews for things like repeated phrases, odd review activity like bragading, and other things. It then gave a letter grade to the veracity of the reviews and an “adjusted” aggregate review score after removing any reviews that it considered to be suspicious.
I’m going to miss fakespot. I don’t know how accurate it was but it definitely informed my decisions.
Fakespot was somewhat accurate at catching when Amazon sellers take a well-reviewed item and swap out the product for another, by changing the title, description, and pictures. We’ve probably all read a review on Amazon that feels like the reviewer is posting a review of a completely different product, like a review that seems to be about a kitchen utinsil on a listing for an unusually affordable camera. It’s a pretty common scam that Fakespot was pretty good at catching. It didn’t seem as good at adjusting ratings for legit products and seemed to kind of randomly knock off a a half to one and a half stars on pretty much every listing, even on quality products.
Alternative? 11Labs Reader will let you build an article library and will read them to you with superior voicing then pocket ever had.
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!
Is this cause of the money they lost from the google thing?
shame about pocket - wonder how much of a hole that really burned in their pocket - if much
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.
To be fair, I think they both existed as separate products first, before Mozilla bought them. I used both, but they should have never been integrated as a part of a browser…
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.
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.
Let us know if you find a replacement. I have pocket on my e-reader and I’m going to miss it
Based on https://fedia.io/m/selfhosted@lemmy.world/t/2206365/Alternatives-to-MZLA-Pocket I’m going to try Wallabag and/or Readeck. Probably the critical issue is whether you can self-host or not:
- Wallabag has a paid public instance, but Readeck you’d have to host yourself until their public service launches later this year (see https://readeck.org/en/start)
- Wallabag uses the Pocket API to transfer data (so I think you’d need to migrate before Pocket shuts down), whilst Readeck can import the file produced by a Pocket export.
- Wallabag has phone apps, whilst Readeck is browser-only (does your e-reader support a browser?)
- Readeck can export to ebook formats (so might be more useful for e-readers in this regard); not sure about Wallabag
Perhaps Wallabag, a self-hostable service to save and categorize articles?
Karakeep is another open source read it later app that is popular
I liked the concept but immediately thought “this is gonna get dropped eventually and I’ll lose all the shit I saved”. Looks like I was right.
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.
to replace them with more stuff that have no business being built in their browser.
what stuff do you mean? I mean, certainly not vertical tabs because they are useful, lots of firefox users like it. not me, but the world does not revolve around me, so…
I’ll grant you vertical tabs. Unfortunately, the new focus of Mozilla is AI everywhere and advertisement, so I’m mildly concerned.
I love vertical tabs!!!
if we have so many tabs that their title is too narrow anyway, why not just have vertical tabs?
you know what, maybe I should give it a go too
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!
They’re not billionaires. They’re corporations.
This shift allows us to shape the next era of the internet – with tools like vertical tabs
T o I h f n e t t e F h r u e n t e u t r eNice. How long did it take you to write this comment? Whenever I attempt stuff like this, it takes far longer than expected because I overcomplicate things
The trick is to use a text editor with a fixed-width font.
Serious question. Do people generally use vertical tabs? I work in IT and have seen countless people’s screens and browsers in all my years, and not one was using vertical tabs (though one put their start menu at the top).
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i have seen a few do it. i don’t get it either.
I use vertical tabs because horizontal tabs use more screen in wide aspect ratios (16:9 or greater) and I want to optimize my screen usage for the actual content, rather than the tabs.
I use them. My screen has much more horizontal real estate than vertical.
Thx for this.
Also, shout-out to https://karakeep.app/ (formerly “Hoarder”)
Thank you! Guess I’ll be trying something new.
Thanks - added to Pocket to read it later.
Hey Op why was Microsoft Palestine thread removed?
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.
I’m already on my second ‘Watch Later’ playlist on YT.
But it doesnt even remove them atomatically when you do, so when I am stuck and go there its full of things I did watch!
And double full of suff I will never.
That is why I started liking (or disliking) every single video I watch in YT, which I am honestly not a fan of as I am helping to craft the algo lol.
But at least if I see a like or dislike I know for damn good I can skip it, even if I don’t remember it…
How does a second Watch Later playlist work?
Just a playlist named “Watch Later 2” where I save videos.
Ah, so it is manual work? I mean nothing to do with YouTube handling.
Not after filling up the first one ;)
Welp, I’ve taught my parents to use the fakespot site before doing a purchase on Amazon. Fakespot was never a perfect tool, but it was easy to use and better than not checking review quality at all.
