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The Secret Power of ‘Read It Later’ Apps | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com · 3,358 words · saved by 1 readers

The database Pocket is building is an incredibly tempting target for many different groups (governments, insurance companies, etc). Even if Pocket isn't using that data (unlikely), the probability of leaks/theft is high. Building a better bookmark system is a good idea. Such a system doesn't need network access. If for some reason you need to share between devices, a socially responsible bookmark/read-it-later tool would be encrypting at the endpoints so an opaque encrypted blob is the only thing stored remotely. (prior art: the original Firefox "sync") Having said that, I'd love to see an open (or at least extensible) and private bookmark system. [1]: https://www.wallabag.org/ [2]: https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign https://www.gnu.gl/blog/Posts/multiple-vulnerabilities-in-po... On my phone it's really not a big deal, since the data consumption is minimal. But I like to do longform reading on my Nexus 7, which is a wi-fi only model, and the places where I'm liable to sit around fo

The "secret power" of Pocket is that someone is making money off selling detailed information on what people red, probably including when, where, probably how long a given document is read. They aren't offering their bandwidth and storage as some sort of charity; those server costs are obviously being covered by surveillance-as-a-business-model. The database Pocket is building is an incredibly tempting target for many different groups (governments, insurance companies, etc). Even if Pocket isn't using that data (unlikely), the probability of leaks/theft is high. Building a better bookmark…

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