Technology

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

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

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Owning things like Pocket is fine as long as each product stands on it's own. Melding them together is what upsets their user base.

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.

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.

YES! No more Pocket button sticking out like a sore thumb!

https://wallabag.org/

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

“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

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

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 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?

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...

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.

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