Firefox's Pocket Tries to Build a Facebook-Style Newsfeed That Respects Your Privacy (theverge.com) 104
An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
Pocket, which lets you save articles and videos you find around the web to consume later, now has a home inside Firefox as the engine powering recommendations to 50 million people a month. By analyzing the articles and videos people save into Pocket, [Pocket founder and CEO Nate] Weiner believes the company can show people the best of the web -- in a personalized way -- without building an all-knowing, Facebook-style profile of the user.
"We're testing this really cool personalization system within Firefox where it uses your browser history to target personalized [recommendations], but none of that data actually comes back to Pocket or Mozilla," Weiner said. "It all happens on the client, inside the browser itself. There is this notion today... I feel like you saw it in the Zuckerberg hearings. It was like, 'Oh, users. They will give us their data in return for a better experience.' That's the premise, right? And yes, you could do that. But we don't feel like that is the required premise. There are ways to build these things where you don't have to trade your life profile in order to actually get a good experience."
Pocket can analyze which articles and videos from around the web are being shared as well as which ones are being read and watched. Over time, that gives the company a good understanding of which links lead to high-quality content that users of either Pocket or Firefox might enjoy.
I use Firefox, but I don't use Pocket. Are there any Slashdot readers who want to share their experiences with read-it-later services, or thoughts about what Firefox is attempting?
"We're testing this really cool personalization system within Firefox where it uses your browser history to target personalized [recommendations], but none of that data actually comes back to Pocket or Mozilla," Weiner said. "It all happens on the client, inside the browser itself. There is this notion today... I feel like you saw it in the Zuckerberg hearings. It was like, 'Oh, users. They will give us their data in return for a better experience.' That's the premise, right? And yes, you could do that. But we don't feel like that is the required premise. There are ways to build these things where you don't have to trade your life profile in order to actually get a good experience."
Pocket can analyze which articles and videos from around the web are being shared as well as which ones are being read and watched. Over time, that gives the company a good understanding of which links lead to high-quality content that users of either Pocket or Firefox might enjoy.
I use Firefox, but I don't use Pocket. Are there any Slashdot readers who want to share their experiences with read-it-later services, or thoughts about what Firefox is attempting?
Jesus Fucking Lord Christ! (Score:4, Insightful)
How fucking dense are you, mozilla?! WE DONT WANT POCKET, NEWSFEED, ADS OR ***ANYTHING*** OTHER THAN A FUCKING BROWSER!!!!
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Re:Jesus Fucking Lord Christ! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not for you. Don't use it.
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Disabling Pocket completely is more complicated than just dragging the icon off the navigation bar. Some of the more advanced Firefox features actually require you to change 3-5 config settings -- simultaneously -- to actually disable them.
People are getting pissy because it's getting harder NOT to use things. One of many reasons I use PaleMoon as my primary browser, and Firefox only as a backup.
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So for now I don't have to use it. What happens when Mozilla decides to make it so pocket can no longer be disabled? I don't want a browser that recommends web sites that I may think interesting. I want a browser that does what I tell it to do. I don't want my browser to be anything but a web browser. It needs to display the web pages that I want to see without ads, and without collecting and/or sending any information anywhere, with the exception of the bare minimum required to find and display the pa
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I've switched over to Waterfox, Chrome and SlimJet, it's a shame it still announces itself as Firefox.
I'd used Firefox since it had a different name and was at version 0.5 approx'. But this business with gaping privacy flaws, several unwanted addons and the final straw - a completely mess with regards to supporting extensions - such a big fuck you to users. It's a shame Mozilla has lost it way, they forgot that people chose Firefox because of it's versatility and they tried to dumb it down and turn it into
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So who are they spying on then? (Score:4, Insightful)
So who exactly are they spying on if they're respecting your privacy? I ask, because:
Pocket can analyze which articles and videos from around the web are being shared as well as which ones are being read and watched.
That sure sounds a heck of a lot like spying. How exactly is this supposed to work? Where is this data coming from?
Also, I call BS on no data making it back to Mozilla/Pocket. There's no way that can possibly work, unless it's pulling the entire recommendations database straight from Pocket. Otherwise, you can probably figure out what a person is doing based on which type of recommendations it asks for. It may be "anonymized" but don't pretend you can't figure out who it is.
Basically, I call BS on the entire premise. You can't "recommend" "popular links" without spying on people, because you have to spy on people to know what's popular. You can't "recommend" links a person "would be interested in" without spying on them, because otherwise you have to have the entire database stored in the client. If you try and only store parts of the database in the client, then you're leaking data, and privacy is compromised.
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No, but you are probably trading on becoming another channel paid to feed people crap they would not really be interested in, all in the guise of giving them stuff "they really want".
To be honest I just use any browser I can g
Re:So who are they spying on then? (Score:5, Informative)
I think you missed the part about "none of the data goes back to Firefox or Mozilla".
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The feature is supposed to work by simply grabbing the same list of trending articles for everyone, then locally selecting which you would find interesting. In order for that to work, they would of course have to know what's "trending", by sending general click counts on articles, but that's about it. Given that, worrying about what they might start collecting later is pointless, because they aren't collecting anything personally identifiable to begin with. If they turn evil, we just stop using it. Big whoo
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IIUC, they're talking about two groups of people who are disconnected.
Group 1 is people who save browsing history or links into a pocket. That gets shared.
Group 2 is people who are typing links into the browser, that gets suggested to from the database created by group 1.
OTOH, this seems to mean that you need to store locally all the most prominent links used by anyone. But it would fit my understanding of what they are proposing.
Pocket free version of Firefox (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pocket free version of Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
2. extensions.pocket.enabled = false (toggle)
3. restart
Re: Pocket free version of Firefox (Score:3)
That's nice and all, but aside from the fact nobody wanted this in the first place, why does it have to be on by default? This is the same opt-out bullshit being shoved down peoples throats.
Seems like Mozilla has some Potterings in their development team.
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I might be able to monetize shoving a stick in your ass. Can't be sure if you'll like it or not. I know you didn't ask for it, but you should give it a try for awhile. It might be a feature that you didn't know you wanted.
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Here too: https://www.seamonkey-project.... [seamonkey-project.org] :P
Facebook sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
therefore Facebook wannabes will suck too.
It has nothing to do with privacy: Facebook's interpretation of what social media should be makes it totally unappealing to me.
As for the privacy thing: Mozilla never gave me any reason to trust them anymore than Facebook.
So... no.
And people wonder why (Score:2)
Firefox is being abandoned and folks like me do not upgrade to the latest and greatest.
As I have said many, many times before, never let programmers program your applications. This is what you get. Something which is practically unusable by the end user but which has plenty of eye candy because it could be done.
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Never let bad programmers program anything. Personally, I am a programmer from the old-school Unix philosophy of: do one thing and do it well.
How about "NO"? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about "NO"?
If I wanted to use Facefuck, I'd use it.
Don't ruin Firefox any further by loading it up with more bullshit and shiny social media crap that no one wants.
Re:How about "NO"? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't ruin Firefox any further by loading it up with more bullshit and shiny social media crap that no one wants.
Sorry, but the infiltration of mozilla by "trendy hipsters" who don't have a fucking clue what the majority of people want continues apace. I'd say put a fork in it and be done, but the people who are forking it don't seem to have a fucking clue either.
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I did until the dev of palemoon decided to start blocking extensions(noscript for example) because of ideological reasons. There's a good need for a browser that's just a browser, no ideological bullshit, no fucking pandering to the cause of the day. Just be a fucking web browser. Brave is getting there slowly.
Mozilla Wants To Be Everything .. why? (Score:1)
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And they failed miserably at being everything, I tried to use Firefox mobile and gave up, Opera is ok on mobile other than the fact that it's utterly senile with regards to remembering whether you want the mobile site or the desktop site.
Re: "use your browser history to divide the web" . (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been saying this for years. The whole premise behind social media and recommendation engines is broken by design. If it is working as designed then you would only ever see stuff that you "like". This puts everyone in their own private echo chamber. For entertainment this might be ok as you want to relax to something you enjoy but for news, it is a disaster and will only get worse as the algorithms improve.
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And how do you "like" stuff, that you don't see?
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But what if I want to see something new. I watch music videos on Youtube. There are tracks that have been around for decades but I have never heard (Obsolete Orkestra, Dischingas Khan, "Born to be Alive", "siberian shaman lady" but the way Youtube is set up, it's impossible to find videos that are unrelated because everything is ring linked and since the videos are random hashes in a huge data space, there's no way to genuinely choose a random valid video. Random video selecters can only pick out videos tha
Sometimes the Pocket stories are interesting... (Score:2)
Sigh ... (Score:2)
"We're testing this really cool personalization system within Firefox ...
And I'll be able to disable this next, new, unwanted thing, how?
[ Or will that be covered with my current config setting: extensions.pocket.enabled = false ]
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Users enjoy controlling scripts and ads for years on the browser only to have the browser push a SJW news feed.
Reason for leaving FF (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't need a Facebook feature in Mozilla (Score:1)
I use Firefox, but I don't use Pocket. Are there any Slashdot readers who want to share their experiences with read-it-later services, or thoughts about what Firefox is attempting?
I don't use Pocket and there is no need for it. Facebook is loosing a high percentage of users daily which should give Mozilla a clue. Come on Mozilla we just want a solid, clean, fast browser that blows the door off Chrome, IE and Edge!!!
RSS Feed? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they're reinventing an RSS feed?
WTF? Have we forgotten everything that's ever been done before, and just decided to recreate it with a new name, make a social tie-in, add some spying and data analytics to make money, and then run a marketing campaign for it?
Seriously. WTF?
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So they're reinventing an RSS feed?
And bookmarks.
"Gee, how will I ever remember a URL that I wanted to read later???"
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Do bookmarks let you store a cached copy of a website for later reading while you are offline, such as while you are riding transit to and from work without a subscription to tetherable cellular data? That's why I installed Pocket in the first place before Mozilla included it in the Firefox distribution.
THAT'S EVEN WORSE YOU ASSHOLES! (Score:1)
I don't want my browser DOING stuff other than being a fucking browser!
Pocket and Developer Edition are Great (Score:3, Interesting)
I got pulled back into Firefox by the Developer Edition. I wasn't sold on Pocket at first, but so far it's turn out to be great for me. Easy to ignore when I don't care, but every time I've looked at it there have been good suggestions that I actually wanted to read.
I think the people screaming about how Mozilla needs to get back to just making a browser completely misunderstand Mozilla. The Firefox era was probably the only one where they did anything close to just making a browser. In the early days Seamonkey *was* Mozilla. It was a full suite of things. They were build XUL and XpCom and all of this as a platform with a strong html rendering engine as the backing for it all. I'm sorry that so many of you were confused by the breakout success of Firefox, but the organization has never been so narrowly defined.
Funny title (Score:2)
Question Poster (Score:2)
LOL! (Score:1)