this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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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.
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[–] doctortofu@reddthat.com 246 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's good and I'm genuinely glad they're trying to clarify it, but it proves yet again that their top management is out of touch with reality and their users: somebody (most likely more than one person actually) had to sign off on these changes and the message they sent out - this whole thing could have been avoided if they understood their users better (and/or if they actually cared nore about what users think).

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago

Google funding allows them to be big and inefficient, which means a lot of tops paid well and thinking themselves fashionable FOSS leader people or something.

They can live without it. They'll have to cut most of the organization and return to being an open project developing a web browser.

That doesn't sound cool for people not doing useful work. Like me, I'll get to my shit instead of typing comments.

[–] psyspoop@lemm.ee 97 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Mozilla says that “there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners” so that Firefox can be “commercially viable,” but it adds that it spells those out in its privacy notice and works to strip data of potentially identifying information or share it in aggregate.

Sounds like they've already been selling (or trading) data and this whole debacle is a way to retroactively cover their asses.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 12 points 2 months ago

google is probably thier number one customer for the data.

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[–] justlemmyin@lemmy.world 93 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Ruh roh. Too late though.

Friendship ended with Firefox,❎ Librewolf is my new best friend. ✅

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 45 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Friendship ended with Firefox,❎ Librewolf is my new best friend. ✅

A big problem with such forks (same with packages made by Linux distributors) is that there is a delay between official FF release and the release of the corresponding update of the fork. 99% of the time this doesn't matter much but when there is a severe security issue, the patch needs to be available ASAP.

Past enshittifications of Firefox could be disabled by users. Users who know what to disable don't need such forks then.

I'm not yet clear what Mozilla even intends. Is it just an adjustment of language of things that are already in FF and can be disabled easily? If so, I just keep the following shit disabled and benefit from earlier update releases.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (7 children)

The issue is that Mozilla is actively hiding these settings. There's one (I forgot which one) that you can't find by searching for the title in the FF settings, you have to scroll to it yourself.

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[–] skankhunt42@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I've already moved most of my stuff to forks or different software altogether.

Firefox -> LibreWolf and Waterfox

Thunderbird -> Evolution

I'm still trying to decide if I want to move off k9mail on mobile to something else. I probably will but I'm not sure what at this point.

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[–] zecg@lemmy.world 74 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I didn't sell your shit, I collected it and shared it to keep myself comercially viable.

[–] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 50 points 2 months ago (18 children)

They have no business collecting any data in the first place. If I wanted my data collected I'd be using Chrome like everyone else. I'm not choosing to use their buggy ass inferior and slower browser for any of Mozilla's services, I'm choosing it because I want to support non-Chromium browsers and regain my privacy.

There's no point whatsoever to using Firefox if it's just a worse Chrome.

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[–] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 41 points 2 months ago (9 children)

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.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] dnzm@feddit.nl 16 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 2 months ago

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.

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[–] LittleRatInALittleHat@lemmy.world 34 points 2 months ago (5 children)

A FOSS browser has and never will require collecting user data.

This should not happen at all.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 47 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

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:

  • Pocket
  • 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.

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] CandleTiger@programming.dev 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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 ~~legal~~ PR strategy: say nothing and hope the attention goes away

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 25 points 2 months ago

Great, but a web browser still does not need terms of service. There's no ongoing relationship between the user and the creator of the browser, at least, there shouldn't be unless the user signs up for additional optional services.

It's great if Mozilla wants to offer some optional services users can opt in to, and those services probably need terms. I use Firefox Sync, though I've started to reconsider that given the recent fuss. The browser itself? I'll move to a fork first, and stop recommending Firefox to others.

[–] not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 2 months ago (2 children)

this is them rolling it back cause of the outcry, they don't want to admit it worked

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[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 14 points 2 months ago
[–] redlemace@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Too late. That wasn't a typo, Terms are going downhill from here. I'm gone.

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[–] shoulderoforion@fedia.io 12 points 2 months ago

cool, sounds good. (the Community gif where Troy walks into the room with Pizza, Pierce has been shot, and there's fire everywhere)

[–] acutfjg@feddit.nl 10 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Too late. I've already moved to another browser

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[–] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Pornhub now remembers what sort of porn you like while browsing incognito. Is this also happening with other browsers? I just don't wanna have my wife know what kid of bdsm I really like. It keeps things fun that way. Fun, gun, hun, nun, are all too close on the keyboard. Autocorrect can't fix that.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Pornhub now remembers what sort of porn you like while browsing incognito.

Are you sure? All incognito windows run in the same memory space. If you open one window and do something in it, that session data is available to any other open incognito window open. To clear this ALL incognito windows need to be closed. Once they are all closed, you should be able to open a single new one and have no remnants of the previous sessions left over for the website to know you. The exceptions to this are if they are tracking activity from your IP address or if they are using Browser Fingerprinting on your session so they know even if you come from a different IP they know its your computer.

I run into the IP tracking sometimes. The wife will be doing searches for some specific thing, and I'll see youtube recommendations show up on those topics even though I'm running youtube via incognito on completely different hardware (but we're both using the same public IP).

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[–] heavydust@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 months ago

I’m eagerly awaiting the new version but I already like it. They now admit that they are sharing and sometimes selling private data (anonymized or not, same thing).

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

The simple way to deal with this is through extensions. Collect anonymized data through an extension, let the user decide to opt-out if they want.

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