Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 381 posts

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#41

Post by ants_everywhere »

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 "private" ad tracking and are underestimating how much damage they're doing to Mozilla's reputation.

I doubt the Anonym tech has been built into Firefox yet, but it's clear that the corporate strategic direction is to bet on some concept of "acceptable ads" like Google did in the 90s.

[0] https://www.adexchanger.com/privacy/mozilla-acquires-anonym-...

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/digital-rights-activists-...

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#42

Post by soupbowl »

Silhouette wrote: post #23

I'm sad and disappointed that simply charging a fair price in return for offering something of value - with no other strings attached - has become so out of fashion in tech world. Almost everyone running tech businesses seems to assume that subscriptions or data capitalism are the only way to make any money these days. But I have paid for good software in the past and I know plenty of indie developers who still sell…

Mozilla can't be trusted to spend their money in a way that improves their browser or their market share. We will never know, but I think Mozilla would squander $100M/year from users. It makes me sad because I have been a fan of Mozilla and Firefox for most of my life.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#43

Post by tomxor »

move-on-by wrote: post #4

> The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or othe…

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 poor communication or they are hiding something else (which everyone should rightly assume in this day and age).

Just tell us already Mozilla!

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#45

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #41

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…

Facebook is sort of tech’s Enron / McDonnell Douglas.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#46

Post by WD-42 »

alabastervlog wrote: post #5
move-on-by wrote: post #4

> The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or othe…

> in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.” JFC, it's funny they try to call this out as some kind of a "weird" definition when that's just... what selling is.

I actually laughed out loud at this. “We can’t say we don’t sell your data because some places have definitions of “sell” that are legally difficult to interpret, for example”:

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#47

Post by ndriscoll »

teshaq wrote: post #34

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…

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/Mozilla Suite, and they had focused on how to sustainably do that, they never would've needed to diversify income sources.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#48

Post by nativeit »

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #24
Shank wrote: post #14

> It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. I really struggle to understand what legal team believes this language is necessary in downloaded software. There is a lot of precedent for this kind of language in online hosted services, but not downloaded software. > This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that conte…

> I really struggle to understand what legal team believes this language is necessary in downloaded software. Exactly. Even if nothing is changing at Mozilla, their legal team has invented a new interpretation of copyright law. That’s a huge deal from a legal perspective—Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc need to be rushing to add corresponding terms to their applications. Mozilla PR is dropping the ball completely by try…

Not for nothing, it is standard legal boilerplate. I just checked two randomly selected terms of service--one for ReadAI, the other for Google--and they both include a very similar clause with those exact parameters.

That said, I'm not suggesting Mozilla isn't also being wildly hypocritical in their behavior, and hamfisted in their PR.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#49

Post by rendaw »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #21
comex wrote: post #19

> Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP). But if the data was fully stripped of potentially identifying information, then it should not count as "personal information" under the California Consumer P…

I dunno, if legal recommends wording for your TOS you should probably listen to them.

Yes, so you claim you can do whatever you want with everything you can get your hands on and then social media blows up because it's batshit insane, but don't worry because you're _legally in the clear_.

You're acting like they didn't have the 2nd option of just not selling the data so the current wording is accurate...

Post reply on HN