Pocket is small stuff. A button on the taskbar that can be removed. Or completely disabled in about:config. Surprising, but not much damage.
For me the Sync surprise was much more disappointing. They broke the feature to the extent it became unusable for me any more (unless I spend some more weekends trying to understand their poorly-documented proprietary protocol mess, which is not how I'd like to spend time).
Unfortunately the View Pocket List menu entry in Bookmarks menu cannot easily be removed. (It is there even with browser.pocket.enabled set to false). Fortunately for me that I don't access the Bookmarks menu too often to be annoyed by it.
> Unfortunately the View Pocket List menu entry in Bookmarks menu cannot easily be removed.
It will be removed if you remove the Pocket icon using the (right-click) contextual menu on the icon. The entry is not removed if you remove manually using the `about:config` way.
Related bugzilla entry[1]:
> The normal/supported way to remove Pocket works fine: Right click the button, select "Remove from toolbar".
It's not about how hard it is or isn't to disable. It's about how a lot of users suddenly wondered what scummy software they downloaded that put that button in their browser, only to be left feeling extremely dirty when they found out it was Mozilla.
It makes you wonder what other liberties they'll take to make a couple bucks and when the other shoe will drop. It has made me start actively evaluating alternatives, when previously I considered it to be the best.
