Mozilla deletes promise to never sell Firefox data

Here's my question: in light of what Mozilla is doing, why don't other forks like Waterfox or Librewolf write a manifesto/contract saying they'll never sell your user data and won't turn "evil" (until they do, of course), and then decide to offer a paid version of their browser.

Two possible outcomes:

1. No one cares. No one pays for it. Nothing changes and nobody loses anything.

2. Enough people pay for it to keep the product healthy and the user-centric promise alive. The Internet is saved.

So why isn't anyone trying to replace Mozilla yet, with a more sane business model than living on the back of Google's fear of antitrust investigation? What's the worse that can happen?

Just sell a bonafide paid version alongside the free one, don't just rely on donations. There is a massive difference between offering a paid product and begging passers-by to spare some change.

Most of the other "forks" (e.g. Librewolf) are just patches on top of vanilla Firefox sources, so it's really not a whole lot to scrutinize by hand. I've skimmed at least most of the patch files personally just out of curiosity. In my distro of choice, NixOS, the sources are built by Hydra or my local machine, so I'm not trusting that their binaries match the source either.

That makes it a bit easier to trust, but it does run into the issue that it stops working if Mozilla hits a certain level of untrustworthiness.

> I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces

The wobble seems to somewhat artificial. I'm having trouble believing Firefox could ever not be able to afford to continue browser development — there are way too many interests at stake. Google alone would have no choice but to bail Firefox out because Chrome can't be the only browser without being regulated to hell and back.

Hey, thank you for Waterfox! I'm using it a lot across all my machines. Well done!

we need to clean cut from mozilla.

do they still make ot worthwhile for developers? are any on the payroll still?

i think the community should mobilize to sign up for adopting A single fork* as the official fork and completely drop mozilla from existence.

* only criteria should be the fork that is most convenient for all the other forks to just point to instead of mozilla and continue to ship with their patches. and that one fork should have the minimum resources to respond to security disclosures in place of mozilla, nothing else as a requirement.

I don't see how a regulated entity is better in any way than an individual.

We repeatedly see attacks on freedom and privacy by the people who are supposed to protect them, those so-called "regulators": chatcontrol, recent UK backdoor wishes, repeated French proposals to enforce DRM even on opensource. And I wouldn't even google Russia, China, or other less democratic states.

Regulated is probably worse than some anarchistic who-knows-by-whom software, but FOSS and auditable these days, tbh. Especially as everyone's audit capabilities grow day by day with AI. It's kind of good at grinding tons of code.

A heavily regulated entity with all licenses in the world might be more hostile toward users than some niche project.

Absolutely agree. The blog post is claiming the opposite to what their ToS is granting - but one is fluff (that will be forgotten soon) while the other is legally binding. I cannot imagine applications like browsers that would require such an unrestricted license for user input just to do its service. That clearly indicates some "other" future motive that is underlined by the notion to remove the FAQ entry and other past actions towards an advertising future at Mozilla.

Am looking forward to explore some of the alternatives. And no, I don't want a just a correcting/updating/informing follow-up blog post of how we the users got it all wrong. In fact, the current UPDATE makes it worse:

"UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice."

vs. the ToS:

"You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet. When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."

No - you don't need a license for my input. Just pass the butter, it's not your job to "use that information" in any way, form or shape. How did you survive 26 years without any license to our input? What did legally change that would require that license? No one asked you to: "We use data to make Firefox functional and sustainable, improve your experience, and keep you safe." (from the blog). What does that even mean? If you have specific use-cases in mind state them clearly, instead of this overreaching general license, that may or may not be misused now or in future. As of this ToS you may very sell my data to AI companies to "help me navigate the internet" which is not even part of the Privacy Notice protection.

Reinstatement your privacy guarantees in the ToS and be transparent about explicit use-cases.

Meanwhile, so long, and thanks for all the fish.

Based on this, Firefox has a 2.54% market share of browsers worldwide, so if their goal here is to shoot themselves in the foot and get that number under 2%, mission accomplished.

Firefox is still the lesser of two evils when compared to Chrome with all of its telemetry turned on. And at least it supports a proper implementation of uBlock origin, which Google just broke in Chrome.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

previous discussion from mid 2023 on low firefox market share: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36759162

That bit pretty much sounds like "by using the software you're agreeing to whatever"

> "....to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."

We weren't born yesterday, and companies pull this shit all the time. This sentence is meaningless. You could use this sentence to justify literally any behaviour.

One _easy_ way to read this change:

> "... to help you interact with online content"

Selling your data to have more relevant ads could easily be justified as helping you interact with online content

> as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

Using firefox indicates that you want us to do this.

Or,

we made it an opt-out that is quietly rolled out in an update.

But Mozilla said what they will do. They also had very expensive rebranding to support it! They are now activist AI company that wants to fight disinformation, censor people and sell ads.

[flagged]

I have seen discussions of this sort of wording so many times over the years. My understanding is as follows (and I could be wrong, but this is my understanding of why that wording is used). If you use Firefox to upload a file to a website then, legally speaking,the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file. Because of Draconian laws in many countries, to publish a file you have to have a legal right to the file, therefore Mozilla have to establish that if you use them to upload a file that you are granting them the legal right to publish that file. It has to be worldwide because you may be uploading to anywhere in the world.

As the browser runs locally on our machine, surely its possible to just block firefox phoning home by DNS black holes or even hosts file or something?

Who cares? Mozilla does AI, they can do all procesing locally, and only report, if local model finds something "harmful". I will not allow some lobotomized tiny local AI model to decide I am a naci, and call police to SWAT my house. We know how it goes with face recognition!

Mozilla is an activist company, that wants to censor, and punish some groups of people. I am not going to give them access to my passwords, documents and emails, and play some stupid game of cat & mouse with firewall rules!

TV manufacturers can get away with such practices, because TVs are sold on deep discounts, and is easy to block network access (never plug ethernet). Browser has tons of free competition, and it is impossible to block network access!

At this point my trust in Mozilla is so low that I could almost believe they intent to run the text I download and upload through an LLM nanny that can scold or ban me if anything offends its Californian sensibilities.

> Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.

> You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to [...] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/

I would wager most people that offer to buy software "one off" typically underestimate their lifetime worth earned through other means like ads and data sales.

Would you pay a one-time $10 for a lifetime Firefox license? $100? $1,000? $10,000?

Firefox is open source. You can take the source code and strip out all of the malware, spying, telemetry and corporate harm leaving a safe and private browser (to the extent any modern browser can be).

There are multiple forks that do that. Download one of them instead. Mozilla Corporation has no control over those, so if you don't like what Mozilla make, exercise your software freedom.

The problem with Mozilla, as far as I can see, is not the the compromises they make for obtaining money (everyone suffers that), its that they're deceptive and underhand about it. That makes them unethical. I wrote plenty regarding that here [0]

[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/you-are-too-dumb-for-tech/

Sigh. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Mozilla's situation. The "weird license nonsense" you're vaguely gesturing at doesn't even make sense in context. Firefox is open source under MPL 2.0.

Your framing that "the choice is between giving all my browsing data to Google and to Mozilla" creates a false equivalence. Even with their recent privacy policy changes, Mozilla's approach is structurally different from Google's core business model.

And "Chrome works marginally better"? By what metric? Firefox has better memory usage, stronger privacy protections, and doesn't exist primarily as a data collection tool for the world's largest advertising company.

The idea that you'd "happily buy Firefox" misses the point of Mozilla's mission for an open web. This kind of uninformed take that ignores the nuances of browser economics is exactly why we can't have nice things on the open web.

What's the purpose of gating "we don’t sell access to your data" by "if switch('firefox-tou')"?

        {% if switch('firefox-tou') %}
          <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>
        {% else %}
          <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>

"No better place to leave for" seems an apt way to put it.

I think/fear that in the long run, there will be fewer and fewer ways to participate in activities and communities on the web on your own terms, as only a vetted, allowlisted set of client builds (that may be "open source" on the tin, but by that point it is effectively meaningless) will be able to pass CDN "anti-abuse" restrictions. It will not be a better web, but it sure will be more profitable for some.

> To HN: Will you be quitting firefox over this change, or is there simply no better place to leave for?

Not to be overly whataboutistic, but we tolerate sooo much more from other players. It's annoying how we hold some to a higher standard, but ignore others doing worse. I get people are disappointed in Mozilla and wants them to do better, but it's a bit like the "we live in a society meme", where those doing good must be perfect or else..

I quit the original l"Firefox" a long time ago, I've been using librewolf since its release and now zen (also a firefox fork) and I keep ungoogled chromium in case a site is broken on firefox.

I'll keep using firefox simply because I keep it behind a proxy server with all pocket, mozilla, firefox and google domains blocked.

The larger impact I suspect this will have in my life, is that I'll increasingly turn to not using websites, opting instead to using tools like yt-dlp.

These changes didn't just happen because of a bunch of greedy ad pushers. This and many other changes over the last few decades came about by taking my tax money and pouring it into these companies to gain compliance to state agendas. This isn't something the 'community' will be able to stave off.

If the internet is just going to become another medium like TV, Radio and newspapers were for so many years, adding on top the ability of the producers to watch me watching them, then it's over. The tech community is full of intellectual dishonest sellouts. Game over. Let's push letsencrypt again in response to the state backdooring the certificate authorities, duuurrr. "AI", duurrrr.

I'll stay for the time being because there is no better alternative.

I have long left the sinking ship and switched to enshitified and actually private https://librewolf.net/

Yeah, I've been a Firefox user and Mozilla supporter for approaching two decades now, even used to donate monthly to the foundation. I'm furious over this. I installed LibreWolf on my personal machines last night and expect to uninstall Firefox after work today.

Just use https://librewolf.net

It's time for distributions to only include browsers developed by non-profits

Which network access is telemetry?

According to the tweet, Mozilla claimed

> “Does Firefox sell your personal data?”

> “Nope. Never have, never will.”

I do believe that never is a very, very clear statement (concerning every possible future) that needs no legal cover.

What are you replacing it with?

The coin is still baked into the browser, but it's disabled by default and doesn't really nag you about it.

At least, that's how it was when I used Brave around 2021-2022.

I've long-since moved to Librewolf, but it's my 'plan C' browser if SHTF with firefox and its downstream forks ('plan B' being Ungoogled Chromium)

Brave has a couple crypto features in the UI but that's about it. I'm big on crypto but I don't use any of the browser's crypto features. Just a browser that cuts most of the bullshit out.

Yes.

That's almost exactly describing Librewolf, though it adds a ton of privacy 'hardening' features out-of-the-box, which can be a positive or negative depending on who you ask.

I personally use Librewolf with the Lepton (Photon style) UI[0], which replicates the previous UI style Firefox used a couple years ago, with small square tabs and condensed menus, before the current pseudo-tabletified abomination.

Of course, if you like the current UI—you'd literally be the first person I've met to like it—you can just use librewolf stock and it doesn't apply any changes to the standard Firefix UI.

[0] https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix