[autoexec]

pocket is a... well, it's a tool anyway, that never should have been anything but an add-on. Including it in the browser was one of the biggest signs that firefox was willing to sacrifice their user's privacy and security for revenue. If people are fine with telling Pocket what they read and letting them push related ads at them all day they should absolutely have that choice, but it should never have been shoved on everyone.

Firefox Sync already had a Reading List which was encrypted and open source, they really didn't need to bundle a third-party proprietary cloud service that required an account and increased attack surface (https://web.archive.org/web/20150818175419/https://www.gnu.g...). People who wanted pocket, and found it valuable would still be just as well off with it as an add-on, everyone else would have been spared the extra trouble of disabling it.

Firefox is still the best browser in terms of privacy and security but only after you make an ever growing number of about:config changes, many of which exist only to remove or disable anti-features added by Mozilla. I really wish Mozilla would embrace privacy, security, and customization as what (apart from the rendering engine, which most users will never be aware of) truly differentiates them from chrome and every other popular browser which are also chrome, but again and again their choices are in direct opposition to those very same principles

[bscphil]

> If people are fine with telling Pocket what they read

I don't believe the ads shown in Firefox require sending any browsing history to the web (whether to Firefox or anyone else). The mechanism used here is different. I do agree with you that pushing ads into the browser chrome by default is abhorrent (a judgment compounded with the fact that they initially pretended that these weren't ads).

[pseudalopex]

Saving pages to Pocket tells Mozilla what you read though. Reading List did not.

[bscphil]

The implication of the first paragraph was that this behavior applied to users by default. If it's effectively opt-in, it's hard to argue that this is Mozilla "willing to sacrifice their user's privacy and security" and that "telling Pocket what they read" was "shoved on everyone", if in fact it is a choice to have your browsing history sent to Mozilla.

[pseudalopex]

Replacing a privacy compatible feature with a revenue generating privacy incompatible sacrificed privacy for revenue. And what you called the implication was your inference.