[dd9990]

I think you're misguided in defending Pocket by focusing an implementation details. You're ignoring that user data and freedom is also at the heart of the discussion. Mozilla put Pocket right in front of their users and actively encouraged them to use a US-based, proprietary service.

> The Pocket client code is free and open source

That's meaningless in the bigger picture. Defaults are powerful. Mozilla added a feature to Firefox (arguably bloat by making the UI more complex) which encouraged their users to give their data to a third party company, one not bound by Mozilla's goals of openness, transparency and freedom. The alternative was to wait and build a similar feature into Firefox Synx which offers true user freedom (self hosting) and really respects freedom (no data harvesting). See the discussion in the bugtracker. That's why users like me disagree with the Pocket decision. The client code is irrelevant.