this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Privacy

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[–] Sophocles@infosec.pub 55 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

I still don't see Mozilla as a bad actor, especially in comparison with the villany that is google and microsoft. It's still a great alternative for privacy newbies and average users, although I personally made the switch to librewolf (desktop) and iceraven (mobile) a while ago. Both being forks of firefox, development for actual firefox is essential for either of these to survive, so Mozilla still has my support albeit indirectly

[–] zecg@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Librewolf / IronFox for me, Mozilla can fuck right off with their cloud services, added value and hunger for telemetry. Their 2% userbase is about to shrink even further.

[–] gon@lemm.ee 7 points 2 weeks ago

Oh wow, I did that exact switch yesterday upon seeing the changes.

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[–] DougHolland@lemmy.world 34 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I've been using Firefox since it was Netscape, and I'm 'concerned' but not going anywhere yet.

[–] Lorindol@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 weeks ago

Exactly the same situation here. I'll wait for a while and see what happens.

[–] yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, same here... I'm cautiously worried, but more for other things that have happened than these last changes.

[–] whalebiologist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I'm mainly trying to work out how to get off windows.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 5 points 2 weeks ago

Nice. I've been there, and changing just a bit at a time has added up to my computing now being in a state I'm much happier with.

[–] thisismyname@lemm.ee 4 points 2 weeks ago

Linux Mint. You'll get a thousand other recommendations which you can perhaps explore once you're more comfortable with Linux but for the easiest most Windows-like experience just get Mint.

You don't even need to ditch Windows completely, if you're uncomfortable with that, because you can dual boot meaning when you turn your PC on it asks would you like to open Windows or Linux

If you don't like it, well, at least you tried. I think you'll have a great time though exploring free software to do tasks you would have had to pay or subscribe to previously.

Take your time, ask questions on forums if you need to, and most importantly, enjoy it. Enjoy the experience of learning how computers actually work, enjoy personalising your machine to truly be your machine.

Good luck, and have fun!

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 weeks ago

This is probably a good opportunity to promote the Lemmy communitiy for LibreWolf: !librewolf@lemmy.ml

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Librewolf. Mozilla will just keep enshittifying their browser. My biggest hope is that chrome is split off from Google and Mozilla loses their funding from google (500M/year). It's way more than they need and they refuse to actually compete with Chrome/Chromium. Instead, they are content being the excuse for Google not to be sued for being a monopoly.

Hopefully the charade will end before Trump leaves office. Either because the US courts force google to split or because the EU finally grows a pair and declares Google and their tech to be a liability. My bet is that a new browser like LadyBird will give Firefox a reason to actually improve, but it'll be too late.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 weeks ago

After a quick look at librewolf I may absolutely join you

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

Nope.

Not that I don't think it's a dumb move from Mozilla, but the options right now are:

  • Stay with Firefox
  • Move to a Firefox-based browser

Especially since I use Mozilla's services I'm sorta in their ecosystem right now. Maybe once I've moved passwords off I can consider moving, but even then on Android the only browser that supports uBlock is Firefox afaik, which makes it my YouTube client of choice.

[–] JPAKx4@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

100% recommend moving off firefox's password manager, as it's generally much more insecure than something like Bitwarden

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I gotta set up something on my home server fr

[–] yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 weeks ago

Ideally, but bitwarden is a great in between solution, you can always export everything later to your self hosted solution of choice.

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[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 5 points 2 weeks ago

a password manager is better.

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[–] Fitik@fedia.io 11 points 2 weeks ago

Not yet, they're still the best option that doesn't use Chromium (I don't count Safari), but Servo is looking pretty promising

[–] e0qdk@reddthat.com 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes.

Short term -- I'll probably be moving to LibreWolf, most likely. I'm planning to spend a good chunk of time this weekend reviewing what exactly their fork does. I've read their self-description already -- and like it -- but I want to look through the code and try to build it myself before I start depending on it.

Long term -- I'll be keeping my eye on Servo and Ladybird.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

No, because I haven't used mainline Firefox in years.
I'm pretty happy with LibreWolf on desktop and IronFox (available on Accrescent btw!) on Android (GrapheneOS)

Unfortunately it's still much less secure than Chromium, but I want and need a proper adblocker to maintain my freedom online. And I'm definitely not using Brave...

The only kinda usable Chromium browsers are Ungoogled Chromium and Trivalent. I think I might try building Trivalent on macOS at some point. Maybe also gonna apply some patches from Thorium, as long as they don't compromise security.

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[–] shaytan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I'm staying on this side, but probably switching to a fork like Librewolf

I've previously used Floorp which is feature rich but not polished, and same goes for Zen

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago

I've heard that librewolf struggles to keep up to date with important security updates iirc? That is pretty much the only thing holding me from using it permanently.

Seeing a lot of people recommend the same three forks, though. I'll have to try them out and see what i like best :D

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I honestly have no clue, personally.

I know i have to jump ship, but my choices are either chromium, or a fork of firefox, that may be slow to catch up with security / may not last.

I've got my eyes on librewolf, floorp and zen.

I'm especially watching https://ladybird.org/. A completely independent browser. But the dev has gotten himself in hot water iirc, but anything to get away from google and mozilla, i guess. Also, it's not complete.

We'll see what the future has in stock for us.

[–] weker01@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

What is forcing you? Why do you have to jump ship.

This is not an endorsement to use Firefox further but I am curious about your phrasing.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think @fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com hasn't yet been enlightened by the fact that one can block Mozilla's URLs and IPs to escape it. TOS for software is dumb and made to be broken, don't let anyone argue with you otherwise.

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[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago

Mainly that i don't want my data being sent to mozilla. But I've decided to stick to firefox for a little more, but this action from mozilla has dropped my trust in them.

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[–] yozul@beehaw.org 6 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Is there anything in the new ToS that's even bad? Like, there are lots of people breathlessly ranting about how privacy is dead because Mozilla mentioned the existence of third parties and gibberish like that, but when I read it myself it mostly seemed like they were just saying that if you use third party services through Firefox then the third parties will have your data. That seems kinda like a nothingburger of a controversy to me. I dunno, I'm not a lawyer, maybe I missed something, but if so I certainly haven't seen anybody else explain it properly.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.zip 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

They also recently removed the promise to never sell data: https://programming.dev/post/26136291

There's this comment (https://lemmy.zip/post/32886349/16923402) in this post (https://lemmy.zip/post/32886349?sort=Top) that should be interesting

You can't see it from Beehaw as beehaw defederated Lemmy.world

[–] yozul@beehaw.org 7 points 2 weeks ago

They removed a broadly worded promise that might theoretically be used to get them in trouble for selling anonymized data. I'm not happy about that, but it doesn't surprise me.

The rest is just people being angry at Mozilla for describing how a modern web browser works, because other companies have pointed at similar language to argue that they have the right to do whatever they want with any information they collect and no one has stopped them. That sucks, but the problem is that there are no consequences for large corporations, not that Mozilla is using the information you put into your browser to access the internet for you. Maybe Mozilla will also decide to intentionally misinterpret their own legalese to train some garbage AI, but the absolute worst case scenario is that they're the same as every other significant browser, and a more reasonable interpretation would be that the non-profit organization is probably not profit motivated and actually means the things they say.

Who knows. I can't see the future, but without Firefox forks of it are a dead-end, and any other browser is still going to collect a bunch of information and use it to navigate the web for you, because that's just how today's garbage javascript laden websites work. Yelling at Mozilla for explaining that in their ToS isn't going to fix it, and Ladybird isn't going to magically change how those websites work. If you really want to do something about it, don't use those websites. Good luck with that.

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[–] BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com 6 points 2 weeks ago

Well, I have been using Zen, a Firefox fork for the past 6 months, and they have yet to clarify their stance on the ToS update.

Anyway, I don't think I'll change anyway, we need Gecko in the browser engine landscape and I have been so used to Firefox'S UI and flexibility that I have a hard time imagining myself not using a Firefox-based browser.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Maybe, but I'll stay on the non-Chromium end of things. I'll definitely try out some competitors, such as:

  • Mullvad Browser
  • Zen
  • LadyBird

I still support engine diversity, but that doesn't have to be mainline Firefox.

That said, I don't think the TOS is as bad as people claim, so I'm in no rush.

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[–] Zikeji@programming.dev 5 points 2 weeks ago

Coincidentally, I just found out about Floorp yesterday, in no relation to this ToS change, and will take a look at it soon. Keep in mind I haven't looked at all yet, so I have no clue if they have a worse ToS or something.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 weeks ago

I'm going to stick to Firefox for the time being at least for the clients where I managed to get Firefox ESR accepted. For everything else, it might be the time to switch to Librewolf. Among other advantages, they have enabled jxl support.

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 4 points 2 weeks ago

On PC, I will look into switching to a fork. Not sure what to do on my phone

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

If they're willing to lose their market share just to chase the AI dragon, I'm willing to be complicit. I know that Brave is pretty good on PC (aware of their crypto bollockery), and I'm taking Librewolf for a spin. As for mobile, I'm happy with Vanadium.

The real shame is Thunderbird getting caught in it. I'll have to look for a replacement both on PC and Android.

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 points 2 weeks ago
[–] ibuki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yep. I've switched to Waterfox, but I need a browser for my phone(I run iOS, yes I know), any suggestions?

[–] AkashicOwl@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] ibuki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It seems like that's Android only?

[–] AkashicOwl@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah sorry, don't know about Iphones

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Brave is unfortunately still the best browser on iOS when it comes to privacy. I absolutely despise of the company and especially their homophobic CEO, but there aren't better alternatives available right now.

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[–] cabbage@piefed.social 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I've been inching towards Gnome Web (WebKit) for a while now. Every time I try using it I last a little longer than last time before I encounter some deal breaking issue and return to Firefox.

In the short term I'm considering sticking to Firefox for work, and using Gnome Web for all other kinds of distractions. I'm writing this in Gnome Web right now, and it's working great. :)

On mobile I'll probably stick to Firefox for a while. So they will still have all my data, and if I have to choose between Mozilla and Google it will still be Mozilla. But my god I wish they would stop acting like idiots.

[–] weker01@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago

No, if I read that correctly the terms do not apply to me as I don't use the "Executable Code version of Firefox".

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