Debian feature request: A system-wide switch to disable all telemetry and "cloud integration" features that make any network connection to the developers' or developers' partners' servers, applied to all software distributed in the official repositories.
Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
451–460 of 1001 posts
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at what they are ACTUALLY doing: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b... The change removing "Does Firefox sell your personal data? Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise." makes it pretty clear that the intention in the changes is NOT just covering their bums for using y…
Full context, from the link YOU provided: ""Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love." There is no reasonable way to read this as an attempt to…
That text continues with this:
> We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
So they share data with partners, which helps to make Firefox commercially viable, meaning those partners pay them for that data. Or in other words, Mozilla sells user data. Even when anonymized or aggregated, it's still selling data.
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#453It's all so strange. I would happily buy Firefox, either as a one off, or as an annual license, and be done with all the weird license nonsense - presumably they want to sell data to pay the bills. But instead the choice, realistically, seems to be between giving all my browsing data to Google and to Mozilla. And Chrome works marginally better... :/
Sigh. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Mozilla's situation. The "weird license nonsense" you're vaguely gesturing at doesn't even make sense in context. Firefox is open source under MPL 2.0. Your framing that "the choice is between giving all my browsing data to Google and to Mozilla" creates a false equivalence. Even with their recent privacy policy changes, Mozilla's approach is structurally different from…
> Firefox has better memory usage
At the cost of a subpar cache; it's not like Chromium is leaking memory, & its memory pressure effects are both well-studied and well-understood. Yet, Firefox stans keep touting lack of comprehensive caching as some kind of advantage. I'm sorry, this is not 2005. It took Mozilla two years to implement some kind of JIT pipelining, and guess what, Chromium had V8 all along: an engine that can benefit from "open web" cooperation courtesy of Nodejs and the vast ecosystem around it. SpiderMonkey? Please. This is the crux of the issue.
> The idea that you'd "happily buy Firefox" misses the point of Mozilla's mission for an open web.
The idea that the web—chaperoned by the likes of Mozilla, can be "open"—is the crazy, unsustainable one. OP is being pragmatic, and considering their privacy carefully. Mozilla's track record is that of a gravely mismanaged, disoriented, and subservient (Google) organisation. Firefox codebase is arcane, was already showing age even ten years ago, & now there's a whole ecosystem of Chromium-based browsers that can benefit from "open web" cooperation.
Firefox has zero moral high-ground, & pretending like it possesses some kind of virtue is a crime against semantics.
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was great, except everyone just installed chrome because the website google told them to and put them right back in the exact monopoly position that allowed IE6 to stagnate. If you use chrome still, you are literally part of the problem. I still think Mozilla, just barely treading into the advertising waters, is probably a better option than the literal advertising panopticon that owns our world and data.
> That was great, except everyone just installed chrome [...] Just to note the Acid 2 test was released April 2005 [1], and Google Chrome from December 2008 [2]. That's about 3,5 years. At some point (around these mentioned years), Mozilla Firefox had a very good market share since MSIE's was dwindling, Safari's was minor (no iOS yet), and Google Chrome did not yet exist. Those were the days ;) Also, Safari only exis…
Safari exists because Apple wanted a Browser they control. They absolutely would have had the capability to create a rendering engine from scratch - KHTML already existing was just a minor convenience.
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#455It's all so strange. I would happily buy Firefox, either as a one off, or as an annual license, and be done with all the weird license nonsense - presumably they want to sell data to pay the bills. But instead the choice, realistically, seems to be between giving all my browsing data to Google and to Mozilla. And Chrome works marginally better... :/
Sigh. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Mozilla's situation. The "weird license nonsense" you're vaguely gesturing at doesn't even make sense in context. Firefox is open source under MPL 2.0. Your framing that "the choice is between giving all my browsing data to Google and to Mozilla" creates a false equivalence. Even with their recent privacy policy changes, Mozilla's approach is structurally different from…
Even with their recent privacy policy changes, Mozilla's approach is structurally different from Google's core business model.
>This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't that the entire brand identity of Firefox is Privacy.
>It's like discovering there's ham in a vegetarian sandwich. When you ask them they look puzzled and say their focus group was clear it tastes a lot better that way, besides it's just a little bit and the bread is vegetarian and there's way more meat in a Big Mac.
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#456Debian feature request: A system-wide switch to disable all telemetry and "cloud integration" features that make any network connection to the developers' or developers' partners' servers, applied to all software distributed in the official repositories.
Just use https://librewolf.net
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#457It's all so strange. I would happily buy Firefox, either as a one off, or as an annual license, and be done with all the weird license nonsense - presumably they want to sell data to pay the bills. But instead the choice, realistically, seems to be between giving all my browsing data to Google and to Mozilla. And Chrome works marginally better... :/
I would wager most people that offer to buy software "one off" typically underestimate their lifetime worth earned through other means like ads and data sales.
Would you pay a one-time $10 for a lifetime Firefox license? $100? $1,000? $10,000?
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#458Time to switch: https://librewolf.net/
They made too many decisions on their own to be a 1:1 replacement. I think there needs to be a new fork, which would just remove all of the spyware bits.
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#459Debian feature request: A system-wide switch to disable all telemetry and "cloud integration" features that make any network connection to the developers' or developers' partners' servers, applied to all software distributed in the official repositories.
It's time for distributions to only include browsers developed by non-profits
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#460Link directly to the Github commit: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b... , which links to the following issue: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/issues/16016 There are a bunch of locked Google docs linked in the issue, probably internal privacy guidelines. I can't say that this surprises me, perhaps they are looking for alternate revenue streams in case Google cuts them out? To HN: Will yo…
I have long left the sinking ship and switched to enshitified and actually private https://librewolf.net/