
How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook - sus_007
https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/13/17446660/mozilla-firefox-pocket-recommendations-ceo-nate-weiner-interview-converge-podcast
======
SyneRyder
I'm nervous about a Pocket news feed in Firefox. The idea sounds promising,
but in practice Pocket's Discovery feature surfaces a kind of pseudo-
personalized clickbait that is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. Here's some
of the stories my Pocket Discovery feed found for me today:

 _" Why your brain hates other people"_

 _" The most hated Bachelor in America explains himself"_

 _" You're doing Scrum wrong and here's how to fix it"_

 _" Fund managers warn a downturn is coming and it's going to be ugly"_

 _" The dangers of belly fat"_

It's lots of outrage & negativity, and I imagine it's because that's the kind
of article people are actually reading & sharing, so that's what feeds the
recommendation algorithms.

I don't mind if Pocket develops a personalized profile of my interests, but
I'd like it to surface what I want to see. Right now YouTube does a better job
of detecting my interest in music hardware & album production techniques than
Pocket does.

~~~
stev0lution
I think there might be a point where recommendation algorithms kind of
'overfit'/become a filter bubble. I remember reading a article about the
youtube recommendation algorithm led to increasingly more radical videos until
you end up on 'that weird side' of youtube
([https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-
po...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-
radical.html)). Depends entirely on what metric you are trying to opimize, I
guess. With youtube is probably something like "time spent on the site". If
you want non-sensational content instead you should probably read papers on
arxiv or something.

~~~
droidist2
For some reason YouTube assumes I really like Mariya Takeuchi - Plastic Love
and recommends it from almost every video I watch. A look at the comments
suggests I'm not the only one this happens to.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNITQR4Uso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNITQR4Uso)

~~~
yborg
Or maybe someone at YouTube just has great taste ;)

------
ve55
These things do not belong in Firefox.

Firefox should be a standalone web browser that focuses on security, privacy,
efficiency, and customization. Not Chome+Social Media 2.0.

~~~
shock
I probably would have agreed with you in the past, but not anymore. Here's
why:

I was having coffee with a friend today and he mentioned he was thinking about
opening a facebook account – here's the kicker: the reason he wanted to get a
FB account was the news feed; he wanted to be able to subscribe to people's
pages and get updates when they post something new.

I mentioned RSS; he was flabbergasted. He didn't know such a thing exists. I
came home and investigated – the option to "subscribe to page" when the page
has an RSS feed is gone from Firefox, or at least I couldn't find it.

~~~
xg15
> _he wanted to be able to subscribe to people 's pages and get updates when
> they post something new._

Yes, but even this feature would be more like a traditional browser: A
service-neutral, "dumb" feature where the user is directly in control. Not in
an abstract marketing sense but literally: A user subscribes to a page and
will get all events from tha page in predicatable order.

The "news feed" as implemented by Facebook and envisaged by Pocket is
something completely different. You "subscribe" to pages alright. But this is
simply a hint that gets fed into a curation algorithm. What you then see is a
selected subset of events from your subscribed pages, in addition to "related"
content and content the algorithm things you might find interesting. The
algorithm used is of course constantly being changed and optimized towards a
metric you probably don't even know. In short, with that kind of system, the
user is very much not in control.

> _I came home and investigated – the option to "subscribe to page" when the
> page has an RSS feed is gone from Firefox, or at least I couldn't find it._

Apologies for being cynical, but I'm not surprised. I'll be bold and assume
that you can make money with curated feeds (or letting other people try out
their curation algorithms on your userbase) but you can't make money with RSS.

~~~
class4behavior
You've explained where Facebook's likely interest lies, but not why that
feature is actually popular.

I don't see any difference with how HN and Reddit attract people. They all
seek the added social aspect to reading news; and Facebook is just what people
know.

>Apologies for being cynical, but I'm not surprised.

Luckily cynicism doesn't equal realism. FF devs often make data-driven
decisions, and none of the devs showed interest fixing all the accumulated
bugs. So they left this to matter to add-ons, the big button was eventually
stored away and the one in the address bar abandoned for Pocket. No sneaky
marketing strategies involved.

~~~
Techonomicon
Reddit and hn are quite different in the sense that HN actively (allegedly)
attempts to fight against clickbait / mislabeled titles where resdit (in
general) leaves that up to the subreddits to manage which (in general) do
nothing.

~~~
class4behavior
Indeed, but it's the same concept, just different target groups.

------
bhhaskin
Why can't my web browser just browse the web? Why does it need to be a news
feed as well?

~~~
trendia
I moved to the ESR branch specifically to get a web browser that just browses
the web. (It's the default in Debian for that very reason!)

However, version 60 added pocket, along with other "features" such as the
optional Firefox experiments (where, if you opt in, they track your user
behavior to improve the browser).

Guess I'll be looking for a new browser again.

~~~
windlep
Hover over pocket area on new tab, click the '...' in the top right, click
"Remove Section", done.

Firefox is about letting you control your browser experience, that's why the
ability to easily remove options you might not like will always exist. If/when
this ever changes, that would be a significant departure from their Mission
statement.

~~~
trendia
> Firefox is about letting you control your browser experience

The true history of Pocket suggests otherwise -- in 2015 Mozilla integrated
Pocket, which was at that time a private company separate from Mozilla, into
Firefox.

Further, when Mozilla first integrated it into Firefox, there was no way to
remove it, only hide the icon:

> "This page
> [http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/articles/1999137-h...](http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/articles/1999137-h..).
> purports to tell you how to disable Pocket for Firefox, yet all it does is
> remove the button from the toolbar. Searching "pocket" in about:config
> reveals numerous preferences that can be edited, including
> browser.pocket.enabled which remains set to true after following Pocket's
> instructions."

Only after severe backlash [0] did Mozilla decide the best way to handle it
was to purchase Pocket.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667809)

~~~
Fnoord
If people (and, organizations) are not allowed to learn from their mistakes
Big Brother is an even more scary thing for our youth than it already is.

~~~
stefan_
But they don't learn. They keep running head-first into these obvious
blunders. Then they write a contrite sounding blog post, change nothing, and
do it again a year later.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931730)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876016)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12441519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12441519)

~~~
Fnoord
Yes, Mozilla made mistakes (I think you mentioned the biggest ones), but they
also did things right. Every of these mistakes was solved. Firefox OS was
solved as well; it got us Servo/Quantum. The question is do you forgive their
mistakes, or what is your alternative? The most popular browser, Google
Chrome, is still _worse_ when it comes to privacy.

------
zaarn
I'm really excited on what Mozilla is doing with Pocket and I hope it
continues down that path. Currently my only gripe is that I cannot download
the archived version of webpages I have and not easily make public link
collections (atleast as far as I've seen), for which I currently use
Shaarli...

Otherwise it's a cool product.

~~~
m-localhost
Here is my backup chain for articles I want to read later/archive against link
rot: I run my own Wallabag instance (self-hosted pocket). Wallabag offers an
rss feed for all new articles that triggers IFTTT to a) save a copy to pocket
(just as backup) b) save a markdown version of the article to dropbox (via
[http://heckyesmarkdown.com/go/?read=1&preview=0&showframe=0&...](http://heckyesmarkdown.com/go/?read=1&preview=0&showframe=0&u=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.mozilla.org%2Fblog%2F2017%2F09%2F26%2Ffirefox-
quantum-beta-developer-edition%2F))

Wallabag also offers automatic tagging rules and RSS feeds to each tag.

[https://wallabag.org/en](https://wallabag.org/en)

------
forapurpose
People are overlooking how critical this technology could be for privacy, mass
surveillance, and all its consequences: Personalization has been the selling
point, albeit disingenuously, for the surveillance. It may be true that people
won't use technologies which provide confidentiality if it means giving up
personalization. A solution that does the personalization locally and with
local data, thus preserving confidentiality, and which is open and free, could
be pivotal.

The same was true with Firefox' customized home page ads of a few years ago.
Everyone focused on 'advertising in Firefox', and overlooked the critical work
they were doing: solving the problem of advertising, a seeming necessary evil,
with confidentiality. In the uproar, the great value of that work was lost
(IIRC).

------
chalkandpaste
I disabled everything from Pocket I possibly can when I downloaded and setup
Firefox, in the `about:config`. That integration annoys me to no end. Who
decided I needed pocket in my browser?

~~~
bscphil
The belief most people have that Mozilla puts things in the browser they
expect to be useful to users is mistaken and needs to die. They didn't decide
_you_ needed Pocket in your browser. _They_ wanted Pocket in your browser, so
that they could sell story spots (read: ads) to the highest bidder.

They discuss advertising in the browser chrome here:
[https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/04/30/a-privacy...](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/04/30/a-privacy-
conscious-approach-to-sponsored-content/)

Note the PR-speak in that article. Advertising, by its very nature, cannot
"provide value to users". If a publisher is paying to promote a story, it's
because they want the story to capture more of users' attention than the users
themselves want.

~~~
chalkandpaste
I agree but I didn’t want to say that as it seemed obvious (at least to me).

Mozilla, a non-profit, which produces primarily a browser with currently a
small market share, needs to do something to bring in some revenue. Having
Google as the default search at one time (and may still be) a revenue stream
for them.

But on the last point about advertising. I disagree with your statement. In
many cases, advertising allows consumers to know about services and goods they
might otherwise not know about. This isn’t inherently bad. I believe the
adtech way, though, is because it puts at harm a lot of people’s data for,
often times, a very negligible benefit in reaching consumers.

~~~
yorwba
> In many cases, advertising allows consumers to know about services and goods
> they might otherwise not know about.

I agree that advertising _can_ help in that way, but I'm not sure how often
that actually happens. The largest markets tend to be for products where
everyone is generally aware that they exist (otherwise the market woulndn't be
large) and most products are only differentiated by brand (e.g. fashion)
instead of novel features. Because generic internet advertising follows the
money, it ends up as a zero-sum game about moving market share between brands.

If there were a site that allowed only ads for completely novel products, or
if the ad is just a link to a double-blinded study comparing along a
measurable dimension against a competitor, I might subscribe voluntarily to be
advertised to. Until then, HN comes close enough.

------
twblalock
Every time Mozilla does something like this, or a promotion like the Mr. Robot
thing, they remove a differentiator between Firefox and Chrome.

Mozilla is making it easier to think thoughts like this: If Firefox is just as
bad as the other browsers, you might as well use the most popular one.

~~~
dublinben
The most important differentiator will always remain that Firefox is free
software and Chrome is the proprietary expression of the largest advertising
company in the world. Anything else either of them does is peripheral to that.

~~~
narag
IIRC Chromium is free software, even if it is a proprietary expression of
something. There's only so much bs you can pull before people has you figured
out. I still use Firefox, but it's been _years_ since any news about it made
me happy. Seriously considering now to compile Chromium myself and use it as
my main browser.

~~~
Sylos
Chromium is technically free software, yes, but it's a horrible example of it.
Because Google entirely controls code contributions to it. Only a fork could
be amended the way that the community wants it.

The same is obviously true for Firefox, with Mozilla being the gatekeeper, but
this is where non-profit vs. for-profit does come back into play.

As for bad things in Chromium, as well as a fork that _tries_ to fix it:
[https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-
chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

As for news articles: When Mozilla does things, they're open about it, which
is why news articles get written about their fuck-ups. And they're held to a
much higher standard by journalists, as they are a non-profit.

When Google does something shitty on the other hand, people are quick to
dismiss it as them needing to make money somehow. And there's lots of
instances where Firefox goes the extra mile, where Chromium conveniently
forgets about it and then no one blames them, because it is the extra mile,
not the standard among browsers.

A prominent example is Chrome Sync. It's not end-to-end-encrypted and Google
does state in their Privacy Policy that they use the browsing history
submitted to them with Sync for other purposes. Your browsing history being
stored on Google's server in decryptable form also means that NSA, CIA, FBI
have access to it. You can make it end-to-end-encrypted, which however
requires a second password and is therefore something that only users will do
that really care about it. Basically, it's there to calm those that would
complain otherwise. Firefox Sync is end-to-end-encrypted by default, only one
password needed.

And this is just the biggest and clearest example. We're talking about
millions of lines of code with tens of thousands of design decisions. Google
will have opted every time for the option that's not yet quite bad enough to
gather bad press. Mozilla on the other hand has no reason not to protect
users, if possible, even if it does not gather them good press.

~~~
narag
So you say that the basic difference is the non-profit status of Mozilla, in a
discusion about things that Mozilla does to make money. I'm not convinced.

Non-profit status doesn't mean that they refuse to take money, but that there
are no stock holders. The organization as such is still interested in
maximizing revenues and people working in it are not necessarily volunteers.
How is decided who works for Mozilla and what's the direction it takes?

The fact that I said that I'm considering _compiling_ Chromium doesn't mean
that I trust Google. There's a top level comment that hits the nail in the
head: we have been Mozilla users because we trusted Mozilla, even when it was
technically inferior to competition. It they lose the differentiation
factor...

~~~
Sylos
There's the Mozilla Foundation, which is legally a non-profit. More
specifically, they are this thing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)(3)_organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501\(c\)\(3\)_organization)

So, there's actual clear specifications of what they're allowed to do and what
not. I don't know the exact ramifications either, but some important points
are that they're not allowed to keep more than a set amount of money and that
any money they get a hold of, which exceeds this amount of money, they have to
invest into their specified mission (which in the case of Mozilla is to make
the internet a healthier place: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/mission/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/)).

They are allowed to pay people appropriate wages, but as you've already
pointed out, there's no stock holders. No one gets paid out extra money when
they make extra profit. They are legally bound to reinvest this money into
their mission.

And there's also the Mozilla Corporation. The Corporation is not legally a
non-profit. So, they don't get tax exemptions, but can keep around as much
money as they want. So, in a way, they can make a profit, which is by
increasing the amount of money they keep in their bank account.

However, they are a 100% subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. So,
the Mozilla Foundation is their only stock holder. If they do make extra
profit, they either have to reinvest it right away, put it on their bank
account to reinvest later, or they can pay it out to the Mozilla Foundation,
where it's again in non-profit hands, and is therefore legally enforced to be
reinvested into Mozilla's stated mission. In other words, it's not possible
for the Corporation to make profit which is not at some point reinvested.

The Corporation being a subsidiary also means that the Mozilla Foundation
holds sovereignty over the Corporation. They can throw out Mitchell Baker
(Executive Chairwoman) or Chris Beard (CEO) and set their wages.

So, the Corporation has motivation to make a profit, because the Foundation
could throw out their key people, which in turn could throw out any slackers
within the Corporation.

The Foundation also continues to hold the Firefox and Mozilla trademarks and
has the final say of what's included into Firefox's source code.

~~~
narag
That's what I thought. Not motivated by greed, but self-preservation.

------
bag123
Pocket seems fairly incompatible with Firefox - claims to be client side yet
requires a login and does not work if cookies are disabled...

------
cJ0th
People do complain about FBs feed but they don't really care. If I were to ask
you whether you'd like to sleep one more hour in the morning then you
answering "yes" wouldn't imply that you don't get enough sleep. A technically
better solution alone isn't convincing. They need a service that delights at
least some people.

And so I think their chances would be higher (but still pretty low) if they
were spending serious amounts of money on a campaign to promote RSS and a
service similar to google reader. That way they'd at least get tech-savy
people on board who would then act as evangelists for them.

------
theweb1
Firefox needs to get in the game and throw chrome an elbow, i'm tired of
google dominating every field.

------
megaman22
Man, why can't we just use RSS as it was intended?

~~~
shock
Because almost nobody non technical knows about it. Not even all developers
know about it.

~~~
class4behavior
Well, that is, as a relative share, in absolute numbers it is still enough for
services like inoreader to do fairly well.

------
jes5199
I tried to switch back to Firefox, but my password manager (lastpass) doesn’t
work correctly, I guess the new extension APIs are too restrictiy. So, Chrome
it is.

~~~
Sylos
Firefox's new extension API is Chrome's extension API + a few extra APIs.
There's a handful of APIs that are actually Chrome/-ium specific, which made
no sense porting to Firefox in the exact same way, but those should not be
critical to the functioning of a password manager.

The only way in which Firefox is actually more restrictive with extensions, is
in requiring user opt-in for internet connections that are not necessary for
the functioning of the extension (so that's usually telemetry or ads).

But if LastPass refused to function because it can't send data back home
that's not actually needed, and which it can't reasonably explain to users, or
because it can't load third-party content from the internet, which would be a
massive security hole, then I strongly advise using a different password
manager.

Overall, though, this sounds to me like LastPass is just too incompetent to
port their extension, which again should not be hard as Firefox's extension
API is essentially a superset of Chrome's.

~~~
cpeterso
LastPass ran into some issues moving to the new WebExtension API last year,
but it does support Firefox and is actively maintained. The most recent
LastPass update was released just yesterday.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lastpass-
pass...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lastpass-password-
manager/)

