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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 214 points 1 week ago

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 18 points 1 week 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.

[-] Darorad@lemmy.world 189 points 1 week ago
[-] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 69 points 1 week ago

"I am doing things that are not selling your data which some people consider to be selling your data"

Why is he so cryptic? Neil, why don't you tell me what those things are and let me be the judge?

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 65 points 1 week ago

Louis Rossmann had a good video about this. Basically, California passed a law that changed what "selling your data" means, and it goes way beyond what I consider "selling your data." There's an argument here than Mozilla is largely just trying to comply with the law. Whether that's accurate remains to be seen though.

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[-] ArchRecord@lemm.ee 30 points 1 week ago

Some jurisdictions classify "sale" as broadly as "transfer of data to any other company, for a 'benefit' of any kind" Benefit could even be non-monetary in terms of money being transferred for the data, it could be something as broadly as "the browser generally improving using that data and thus being more likely to generate revenue."

To avoid frivolous lawsuits, Mozilla had to update their terms to clarify this in order to keep up with newer laws.

[-] mle86@feddit.org 23 points 1 week ago

I think this is a reasonable explanation.

But I also believe a large part of the firefox user base does not want any data about them collected by their browser, no matter if it is for commercial purposes or simply analytics / telemetry. Which is why the original statement "we will never sell any of your data" was just good enough for them, and anything mozilla is now saying is basically not good enough, no matter how much they clarify it to mean "not selling in the colloquial sense"

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[-] PixelPinecone@lemmy.today 25 points 1 week ago

I’m pretty sure this person is making a joke using a fake exaggerated “answer” from a corporation to highlight the absurdity of their double speak. I doubt something this insane would come from an actual spokesperson.

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[-] zecg@lemmy.world 73 points 1 week ago

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

Surprise Mechanics 🤗

[-] psyspoop@lemm.ee 69 points 1 week ago

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 1 week ago

google is probably thier number one customer for the data.

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[-] justlemmyin@lemmy.world 58 points 1 week ago

Ruh roh. Too late though.

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

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 36 points 1 week ago

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 1 week ago

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 12 points 1 week ago

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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[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 47 points 1 week ago

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.

Even if Firefox is selling your data, its still 10x better than chrome since they allow uBlock Origin. Fuck chrome and fuck ads

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[-] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 41 points 1 week ago

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 1 week ago

The drama isn't exactly their fault. There are a lot of rich organizations that want them to cease to exist. Most 9f which want track you online and/or shove ads down your throat.

[-] dnzm@feddit.nl 16 points 1 week 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 13 points 1 week 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 33 points 1 week ago

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

This should not happen at all.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 46 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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 28 points 1 week ago

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 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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

[-] not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 1 week ago

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

[-] verdigris@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago

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.

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[-] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 13 points 1 week ago
[-] Zak@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week 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.

[-] shoulderoforion@fedia.io 10 points 1 week ago

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

[-] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

yet you missed the elephant in the room.

kid

[-] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

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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[-] redlemace@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

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

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[-] acutfjg@feddit.nl 10 points 1 week ago

Too late. I've already moved to another browser

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[-] Glent@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 week ago

Whats the alternative on android?

[-] blackbarn@lemm.ee 20 points 1 week ago
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[-] Ledericas@lemm.ee 12 points 1 week ago
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this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
662 points (97.6% liked)

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