We need an EU alternative to Firefox.
Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
461–470 of 1001 posts
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#462Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#463It'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... :/
Firefox is open source. You can take the source code and strip out all of the malware, spying, telemetry and corporate harm leaving a safe and private browser (to the extent any modern browser can be). There are multiple forks that do that. Download one of them instead. Mozilla Corporation has no control over those, so if you don't like what Mozilla make, exercise your software freedom. The problem with Mozilla, as f…
Rather than downloading random binaries from random forks (or clamour for governance at the sidelines), you can take back more control by building your own fork.
Librewolf and Waterfox are two fine choices to use for upstream sincr they have saner defaults and make the forking and building easier to wire up.
Ive been running my own FF fork for a few years like this now.
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#464So... for the most practical question:
Anyone have a favourite Firefox fork that removes this and doesn't add other spyware or reinvent the UI too much?
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#465Firefox's blog post in the change[1] has an update: > UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox… Uh, yeah, that's exactly the problem. Mozilla shouldn't be allowed to use all the information I type into Fir…
I really hate this kind of response to criticism. No Mozilla, fundamental disagreement does not mean that peole are confused and need to be told what to think.
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#466Okay, can anyone recommend a good, uBlock-Origin supporting browser that isn't controlled by underhanded corporate/for-profit lying-through-their-teeth pieces of shit? Making these legal terms changes while "summarizing" them with the typical "we care about your privacy" bullshit is of the same nature as punching someone in the face and exclaiming you are caring about their health. It's just evil - misleading and abu…
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#467Link 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…
> To HN: Will you be quitting firefox over this change, or is there simply no better place to leave for? Not to be overly whataboutistic, but we tolerate sooo much more from other players. It's annoying how we hold some to a higher standard, but ignore others doing worse. I get people are disappointed in Mozilla and wants them to do better, but it's a bit like the "we live in a society meme", where those doing good m…
Those perceived to be doing good are often used to lessen the blow of those perceived to be doing bad. Like how it's not so bad if your train sinks of faeces if there's a bus you can take instead. Losing the safe alternative makes the original sin worse.
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#468Ask HN: Is Brave an ok alternative?
Brave was never good: crypto-crap, based on Chromium, and was modifying web pages from the start without your consent. I never understood why people use it.
People use it because it is essentially Chrome with uBlock-Origin built in (I think the developer of uBlock Origin is employed by Brave) and it removes the stupid cookie modals that are on every website. Between running a pi-hole and Brave, I rarely see an advert on a website.
Turning off the "crypto-crap" can be done quite easily (you literally right click on the BAT icon and it is gone) and the new tab ads are removed again with a couple of clicks. I've found it also runs much better than Firefox on older hardware.
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#469Time 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.
Which decisions? LibreWolf ist exactly that + hardening used in tor browser maybe you mean those but all of them you can change in setting.
Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it seems like Mozilla has long had a problem of marketing getting in the way of communication. This keeps happening over and over gain. They make changes for marketing reasons, and then people are confused when they make policy changes because they've solidified their naming so much in the pursuit of brand recognition that their audience (rightly) is confused about what they're actually saying when they use that…
Mozilla is quite adept at own goals when it comes to privacy. If I were a Mozilla executive reviewing this policy, I'd send it back to the lawyers to make a lot more effort to be clear about what Mozilla will and will not do for stuff, in a way that is actually readable and understandable by lay people. I have enough legal knowledge to know that most of this is basically necessary legal boilerplate because holy crap…
The problem is more that they actually do want to sell user data (albeit anonymized and/or aggregated), and they want to present themselves as a privacy-favoring alternative.
They literally say:
> 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. 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).
Sharing data with partners and getting money in return (that's what "to make Firefox commercially viable" means) is selling user data. They want to change the definition of selling data to exclude what they want to do, but they don't get to decide what the meaning of words is.
So they're not as privacy-friendly as they want to appear, and that's a difficult position, and that's why this policy allows them more access to data than a naive reading would indicate.