Mozilla rewrites Firefox's Terms of Use after user backlash

Why is Ladybird going to be more successful than all the other failed browsers?

> If we need to do anything, it's get behind Ladybird

and servo please ...

> Others won't buy that, believing that a browser can be built without relying on advertising. Ladybird is taking this approach - so we'll find out.

I'm afraid that we'll find out indeed and end up with no Ladybird and no Firefox either.

I agree completely that something needs to change procedurally—this can't be allowed to happen again

if that were truly (sustainably) possible, I'd support it, but imo that'd just be signing ff's death warrant

side note, thunderbird is already independent and democratically-managed by the community (as of a few years ago). the way I understand it is that they effectively just use mozilla's resources for legal, logistical stuff

No it's realism.

ALMOST EVERYONE is voilating user privacy to some extent. That's the price to pay for free software. It sucks, but how do we climb out of that reality?

Punch the bad guy in the face if you like, YOU have options, but once FF is sunk, the the only provider most people can turn to for the stuff they need is Chrome.

If Mozilla/FF is the bad guy in your analogy then Chrome must be an atroticy-committing omni-cidal megalomaniac, which correct me if i'm wrong, is not better.

If you understand the privacy landscape and don't want to get involved you don't have to. I'm on a multi-container, multi-privacy extension, private-search setup because I roughly understand the environment. But I'm certainly not recommending that setup to my parents.

In my view MZ/FF is the least worst of the VIABLE alternatives and has the best chance of success. Sinking Mozilla's firefox in favour of ladybird or brave but none of these will ever have the marketing collaterall that mozilla has/had to be anything other than niche, until they are bought by Meta or Amazon or (you get me)

Most banking websites that most people need to use don't give a fuck about niche browsers and actively agent-sniff to reduce their support and security footprint. Whining down the phone to megacorp's customer support that "you don't want to use Chrome on privacy grounds" and "they really should support ladybird" will not be the mighty hammer of resistance you think it is.

I don't have a better suggestion and so I'm willing make a deal with a bad guy it means I don't have to install Chrome on my mother's PC.

> Mozilla is violating user privacy.

They have changed literally nothing except the FAQ. The "selling" is describing behaviour they already do and have been doing for years. They set the default search engine to Google, this is now considered selling user data.

> There are already multiple forks for Firefox and destroying Mozilla as an organization would greatly help one or more of them take off and carry the banner of true enabling privacy for the user, which Mozilla is not doing.

You do realize that if Mozilla dies then every single one of these forks dies with it? Surely?

None of the teams working on these forks actually do any core browser engine work. Without Mozilla you are an ECMAScript update or a new web standard away from your fork of choice becoming a brick.

This leaves out the important part, nothing has actually changed. This is entirely a rewording for what they're currently doing and have been doing for years.

If it's such an outrage worthy subject why did no one explode about this when they added the sponsored links years ago?

>"we're going to sell your data"

And:

>>This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox.

So now we can use your photo of your birthday party that you sent via webmail... but don't worry, we don't own it, you just gave us a "non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license".

There's no chance I would be able to recommend some Waterfox or Iceweasel to family or friends. Current status is Chrome or Firefox, and there's a long long way ahead for anything else to become relevant. Death of Firefox would mean immediate death of all the forks too.

You're forking the FAQ? Because that's the only thing that's actually changed here.

It still doesn't make sense unless that info is going via mozilla's servers. Software running on your PC doesn't need permission to process and send data that you are giving it, to send it to the places you intend.

I'm looking at the https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#lawful-bases section of the new privacy document which goes into more detail on what is collected and why, along with the "Types of Data Defined" section above it that describes the different data.

It doesn't differentiate when that data is stored locally, when it is sent to (and collected by) Mozilla, and when it is sent/accessed by the website you are on/using.

Likewise, because "Interaction data" covers both "how many tabs you have open" and "what you’ve clicked on" (as well as ad related information in the next paragraph) it can cover things like handling anchor ping attributes (what you've clicked on) which are nec1essary for Firefox to work w.r.t. that feature vs. collecting ad related information ("Click counts, impression data, attribution data, how many searches performed, time on page, ad and sponsored tile clicks.") which is not.

With those broad information categories they are combining different use cases from using the browser, telemetry, and collecting data useful for advertising.

Another example: in the "To adapt Firefox to your needs" section they explicitly call out sending location data to websites like Google Maps but the data collected is listed is "Any data type" not "Location".

I know there are other cases, but the specific wording is vague and unclear. For example that section mentions being able to "clear your browsing history". As a developer I can infer that that is related to JavaScript APIs being able to access your browsing history, but that isn't called out in this section so it is unclear that this is what they are referring to.

Why? Mozilla has been circling the drain for a while with their poor decisions, and questionable privacy practices all while proclaiming to be all about user privacy. Now they have flushed any goodwill they had right down the toilet.

As leaders, they need to be held accountable for their poor decisions. Which means they need to fuck off, and let new people come in and rebuild trust.

If I remember correctly, more than 50% of their revenue came from Google Search in the past.

They are now at 2.6% market-share, I can imagine that revenue-stream is making it hard to keep the lights on.

It's sad that it came to this, but somewhat understandable as they don't really have these other lucrative side-businesses of Google, Apple, Microsoft.

FWIW, the change is that the new wording allows them to build a revenue-stream based on telemetry data, while the original wording prohibits them from such a financing model at all.

Outside of Europe this might be significant, but in European legal context the difference is that they could now ASK you if you allow them to use your telemetry to create revenue, and only do it IF YOU AGREE (small nudge to push for privacy-friendly laws).

I would say they are changing the promise, not breaking it. Breaking it would have been if they sold data with the old description (which is not the case, is it?).

The definition of the word "sell" has a different meaning in a post-AI world and in specific California have a new bill adding some other contexts to it, so despite not actually doing anything differently (go and look at the Firefox source tree if you don't believe me) they have to change their wording.

ETA: Setting Google as their default search engine in exchange for funding from Google has been cited as an example of "selling user data to Google", if you'd like a concrete example of what I'm talking about.