Firefox update: Browser will now recommend stories from Pocket in your tabs

Stories will come from data gathered by Pocket about the most read, opened, and saved articles

(Credit: Pocket)

Mozilla has announced a new update to the Firefox browser which will allow Pocket’s article recommendations to appear whenever a user opens a new tab.

Pocket is an application, and browser extension, that lets users save articles from websites to read later. In Firefox, it will recommend “thought-provoking essays, hidden gems, and fascinating deep-dives from UK-based publishers both large and small — and other trusted global sources from across the web.”

Those sources include the BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and the New York Times, as well as magazines and online publishers such as National Geographic, Wired, Fast Company, New Statesman, the Spectator, and London Review of Books.

The way that Firefox and Pocket will recommend these articles is by collating data from its most saved, opened, and read articles. That is then aggregated, allowing Pocket’s curators then sift through and recommend what it considers the best of these stories.

The companies are hoping that the result will be a “unique alternative” to other news feeds which are generally curated by an algorithm, with users potentially seeing outlets that “might be outside their normal reading channels”.

While Pocket is using your data to make decisions about what to show other people, the company claims that privacy remains secure: “Recommendations are drawn from aggregate data and neither Mozilla nor Pocket receives Firefox browsing history or data, or is able to view the saved items of an individual Pocket account. A Firefox user’s browsing data never leaves their own computer or device” Mozilla said in a release.

The new feature is available in Firefox now, but users might not see it immediately. If it appears that the feature is inactive, users will need to change their “New Tab” settings and, under Firefox Home Content, allow “Recommended by Pocket”.

Right now, article recommendations are only available to users in the US, Canada, the UK, and Germany. It is expected it will be rolled out to more countries in future, but Mozilla and Pocket are taking that slowly.

"We carefully assess our expansion plans, leading with ensuring that we can get the content recommendations right, and how well we can ensure this for a market. We are focused on launching in the UK and providing quality content for our users before setting sights elsewhere," Mozilla said.