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> TL;DR Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data”)
Three paragraphs later:
> In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar.
Sharing our data with advertisers in return for money is exactly the way most people think about "selling data".
It may be relevant that Mozilla recently acquired a Meta-created ad tracking company and is now awash with Meta ad execs. [0] It may also be relevant that Meta is recently upsetting people in Europe for tracking and targeting people in spite of Europe's data protection rules [1]. My guess (and this is just speculation at this point) is that Meta and Mozilla think they're being clever and getting away with some "priva…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mozilla were pulling in ~$500M/year on those search deals. So on year one, spend $15M on a team of 20+ highly competent full time developers for Firefox, put $450M into a trust to fund future development, and find something to waste $35M on. Then for the next 15 years, find something to waste $500M on. The amount of money they've squandered is mind-boggling. If their goal had been to develop Firefox/Thunderbird/Mozil…
>spend $15M on a team of 20+ highly competent full time developers Implies that the browser is the mission, not some social cause is the mission
Wikipedia is doing the same.
While I agree with folks that this is a step backwards in privacy, I think it’s a good exercise to zoom out and understand Firefox’s position. The browser market is highly competitive, and Mozilla’s competitors have orders of magnitude more resources at their disposal. As we all know Firefox’s market share has been dropping over the past years and unfortunately the revenue supporting all of Mozilla comes predominantl…
I'm not gonna claim that donations would have rivaled the Google revenue otherwise, but they will certainly be many many times higher than what they are. Lots of people are willing to and even want to set up a regular donation to Firefox as the lone non-Chrome bulwark in the FOSS space. There would have been grassroots efforts to get more people to donate on the regular, hell I would have put in serious work on such efforts if we actually had a way to donate to keep Firefox alive and healthy.
It may be relevant that Mozilla recently acquired a Meta-created ad tracking company and is now awash with Meta ad execs. [0] It may also be relevant that Meta is recently upsetting people in Europe for tracking and targeting people in spite of Europe's data protection rules [1]. My guess (and this is just speculation at this point) is that Meta and Mozilla think they're being clever and getting away with some "priva…
Their mission and plan for the future is so incomprehensible that it’s probably just easier to assume actual malice.
Hard uninstall. Can’t believe I’m mainling Kagi’s Orion browser. Yet here we are.
if it's not, why are you putting trust on them more than firefox?
While this is confirming that Mozilla is already outright selling data, it at least DOES provide clarity on the issues around the acceptible use policy. That language had been so broad that it forbade most use of the browser. For example, "send unsolicited communications" so no filing a bug report. "Deceive, mislead" so no playing Among Us. "Sell, purchase, or advertise illegal or controlled products or services" so…
why you think that filing bug reports in place inviting bug reports is "unsolicited communication"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they would simply tell us what part of Firefox is affected by the CCPA's definition of "selling user data", there would be no room for misinterpretation and this would be over. If it's as innocent as "Firefox has to send HTTP packets to arbitrary web servers to achieve the fundamental function of loading a page" and that web server is considered 3rd party by CCPA, then everyone would understand... this is either p…
From the article: > In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. And remember, they’re citing CCPA’s definition as meaning “… in exchange for ‘monetary’ or ‘other valuable considerations’”. This is exactly what people mean by “selling”. It’s…
Mozilla is helping perpetuate the illusion that online advertising necessarily includes collecting and selling data about the users who are shown the ads.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Selling browsers was tried, back in the 90s. They lost to free, when the audience was much more limited. Trying to sell a browser now is an even weaker proposition to most users. I also think you're overselling how many devs would pay for their resources. Individual contractors? Sure. But anybody salaried? My employer's response wouldn't be "sure, we'll pay for MDN & Firefox dev tools for all our devs"; it'll be "go…
> Trying to sell a browser now is an even weaker proposition to most users. To most users yes, but a group of power users like me can make them life-changing money. I'd happily pay a monthly subscription for my web browser. It just does not need to be a U.S. entity. Otherwise, people without a Visa or Mastercard will be left out. Crypto is fine for this use case.