AI Summary:
Overview:
- Mozilla is updating its new Terms of Use for Firefox due to criticism over unclear language about user data.
- Original terms seemed to give Mozilla broad ownership of user data, causing concern.
- Updated terms emphasize limited scope of data interaction, stating Mozilla only needs rights necessary to operate Firefox.
- Mozilla acknowledges confusion and aims to clarify their intent to make Firefox work without owning user content.
- Company explains they don’t make blanket claims of “never selling data” due to evolving legal definitions and obligations.
- Mozilla collects and shares some data with partners to keep Firefox commercially viable, but ensures data is anonymized or shared in aggregate.
Mozilla collects and shares some data with partners to keep Firefox commercially viable
How hard is it to be specific? People are concerned about this, can they not tell us the exact data they share and with whom, or is doing so going to make people more concerned so they are avoiding telling us?
They can’t be specific in the legal note because that would close their options and prevent them from auctioning off every month to the new highest bidder.
They certainly could keep a page of what they’re currently selling to whom, but even if it was innocuous (doubtful) that would again put them in the news every time they changed it.
Tried and true
legalPR strategy: say nothing and hope the attention goes away
I didn’t sell your shit, I collected it and shared it to keep myself comercially viable.
Surprise Mechanics 🤗
Too late, I switched to Floorp.
Because of privacy stuff? No. Because of repeated drama? Yes.
I don’t have time for this stuff. I don’t have time to track every minute twist of the knife that Google’s funding drives Mozilla to embark on.
I’m bored of using software and watching it go through “death by a thousand minor dramas”
So now I use a web browser that has a name so stupid I don’t even recommend it to other people. Brilliant.
The drama isn’t exactly their fault. There are a lot of rich organizations that want them to cease to exist. Most of which want track you online and/or shove ads down your throat.
A fair amount of drama is exactly their fault. Mozilla chose to increase management pay and fire people, Mozilla chose to flirt with ai, Mozilla bought an ad firm, and so on. It’s not like someone was holding a knife to their throat.
Floorp isn’t recommended for its privacy features anyway, it’s recommended by users for the amount of customization you can do. It’s got some features that Firefox has that I don’t want to do without.
Even if the name sounds stupid, you should still recommend it to other people :D
Have been doing so for a few months and haven’t had any negative feedback.
Truly an outstanding move
Try zen browser. It’s just like floorp but has that Arc browser aesthetic.
I was a floorp user until I tried zen browser. You should give it a try too.
Never heard of this one before. too bad it doesn’t have a mobile version as well.
Floorp is a new Firefox based browser from Japan with excellent privacy & flexibility.
💀
The magic of forking!
✨
A FOSS browser has and never will require collecting user data.
This should not happen at all.
Certain features certainly could be considered as doing that, such as:
- Firefox sync
- crash reporting
- add-on store
I certainly want those. And then there are others that I don’t want:
- telemetry
- studies
- AI
My understanding is that this change is primarily motivated by a recent law change in California that has a pretty broad definition of “selling user data” and this is less likely to be a fundamental change in how Mozilla operates. However, let’s see what they come back with.
That second list should also include
- Ads
Because ads in the search bar results are one of the things Mozilla cited as precipitating the need for ToS.
Is that a pocket thing? Because I disable pocket and changed the default search engine.
If they laid out precisely which features result in data collection by Mozilla and how to disable them, I’d be pretty happy with it. However, if they’re unilaterally collecting data and not really separating concerns, then I’ll need to find something else.
What do you think a browser does?
The browser manufacturer doesn’t need a license to my inputs to process them and give them to the server it’s supposed to give them to. If you type a text in Libre office, does it ask you for a license to the text in order to save it?
No, but that’s a local program processing and saving data entirely on your system. It’s a world of difference from what a web browser does, which is oversee a whole suite of protocols connecting you to remote servers and transmitting data back and forth in requests that build on and reference each other. With the complexity of modern web interactions, there’s a ton of reasons why a browser might need to store your data and share it with others, even ignoring profit-seeking motives.
And let’s remember that the last thing Mozilla got heat for was the introduction of a method to anonymize bulk user data for sharing & selling purposes, as opposed to the granular, extremely invasive tracking that 99% of websites are doing these days.
I see a company that needs to make a decent amount of money in a crazy competitive environment, that’s trying their best to do so in the way least destructive to user privacy and choice.
Not even the lemmy instance you’re on needs a license to your content, and it is stored there and displayed for the world to see. Why is that? Because storing and displaying your posts is the very thing you want it to do. That is the service it is providing for you, and you declare that you want it to do that by clicking “send”. They would need a license if they wanted to do anything else with your stuff, which doesn’t directly have to do with displaying your posts in the fediverse.
The browser is supposed to take my requests and inputs, carry them to the server that I’m talking to and bring back the answer. The mail doesn’t need a license to my letters. That only changes if they want to open them and do something I originally had not intended.
But you know who claims a license to your content? Meta. Because you’re the product there, not the costumer.
And let’s remember that the last thing Mozilla got heat for was the introduction of a method to anonymize bulk user data for sharing & selling purposes,
as opposedin addition to the granular, extremely invasive tracking that 99% of websites are doing these days.Ftfy. It’s never going to replace more invasive tracking and just constitutes yet another party collecting my data.
I see a company that needs to make a decent amount of money
Mozilla already makes enough money from passive investment income. They don’t need to make any money from Firefox at all (but they do, it’s from google). They also don’t need to pay their CEO 6 Million a year.
Edit: Typo
Too late. That wasn’t a typo, Terms are going downhill from here. I’m gone.
We saw it with reddit and that place is fucked now. Seems no one can be content with their status, they all need more.
this is them rolling it back cause of the outcry, they don’t want to admit it worked
The terms were never actually bad. This is them responding to the backlash, yes, but that’s just because everyone freaked out over nothing. They’re not “rolling back” anything, and this comment is just more disinformation.
The proof that even techies can confuse « rollback » and « fix ».
Me looking at Mozilla like: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GHShUPtagAANgks.jpg
What’s the alternative for Android? Fuck Chrome I want to move off this shit onto something that actually gives half a shit about me.
Fennec on F-Droid, which is Firefox fork
Boy have i got a treat for you, Ironfox! the continuation of Mull
Will check it out, thanks.
IronFox
Tor. Anything short is freely giving your data away. If you’re looking for something that isn’t based on Gecko or Chromium there is the DuckDuckGo browser, which is WebKit. I can’t attest to how good their privacy policy is though as I have no idea.
Tor Browser doesn’t include uBo (on Android at least) and their ad blocking is abysmal. Its great that no one can trace your IP but completely useless since it doesn’t do anything to block trackers.
Anything short is freely giving your data away.
Misinformation.
Anyone have a decent Android alternative? Updated my phone last night and this morning got a notification that Firefox had full permissions for accessing my location data. I’d like to move away from Firefox before enshitification is in full swing.
Try out Ironfox. It can be installed through F-Droid.
Dope, I’ll give it a go 👍
I use Fennec
Righto, pop that on the list. Thanks 👍
Did you give it to it?
It can be a pretty nice feature for using map-based apps in the browser.
I haven’t used such websites for a while and I don’t see Firefox in the recent users of the location API, even though I use Firefox Android all the time. (Info available in Android under Settings/Location.)
Absolutely not. There’s not a single app on my phone that I willingly give unrestricted access to my location data. At most I allow “while using the app” and have my phone set to ask for permission for background running.
I switched to waterfox. Looks pretty much the same, no issues so far.
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they were effectively owning everything you fo in firefox, how is that nothing
does this affect any fork of firefox? Like floorp?
Already uninstalled everywhere. Better luck next time, Mozilla.
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People hate whenever Brave is mentioned… But when it comes to privacy, I have not regretted my decision to use it
I mean if you are already ok with using a Chrome reskin from a crypto ad company your standards are already set too low.
People who use Firefox are concerned that Firefox is slowly shifting into what Brave is now. Aka an ad company.
I swear to god Brave browser is a cult. People who are into it a really into pushing it. No, I don’t want your crypto-bro, ad company run, chrome reskin.
But you have no problem with the paid-for-by-Google, ad company influenced, whittle away at the few protections they used to have, browser?
This is literally better in every way.
This being said, better in every way does not mean good. It’s just hard to be worse than a crypto bro run, literal ad company, who’s browser is a reskin of chrome.
Hot off the presses, in addition to the CEO being queer-phobic, he literally is now ranting about how George Soros, and leftists are treating him unfairly.
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