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Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#521

Post by account42 »

igor47 wrote: post #102

folks, this is NOT good. i guess we're generally at the mercy of big tech day to day, but with firefox in particular -- i use it almost more than any other software, and these terms seem particularly nasty. i do think we can exert some pressure on mozilla here -- HN users are like 60% of the firefox user base. i recommend writing to legal-notices@mozilla.com to object to this policy. do it right now. here's what i wr…

> HN users are like 60% of the firefox user base

lol

> i recommend writing to legal-notices@mozilla.com to object to this policy

denial

anger

bargaining depression

acceptance

Best accept that the Mozilla that was interested in creating a User Agent as opposed to a consumer product is gone and look for and support the creation of alternatives.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#522

Post by procaryote »

kevingadd wrote: post #169
userbinator wrote: post #151

The other WTF is here: Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations. Acceptable Use Policy links to https://www.mozilla.org/about/legal/acceptable-use/ which says "You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[...]Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that…

Firefox-the-browser isn't a service, it's a product. Their services are things like profile syncing. It makes sense to me that they wouldn't want content on their servers that they could get in legal trouble for hosting.

If they're worried by what might be in the profile data they're syncing they should just make it e2e encrypted so they can't know what's in it

But they clearly want to collect and sell that data

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#523

Post by rectang »

apalerwuss wrote: post #511

The problem I have with these kinds of hot-takes is that they often don't tell the full story, and it's seemingly for the purpose of generating rage. For some inexplicable reason, this guy truncates the paragraph from the Terms of Use, repackaging the information without a key part of the final sentence: "....to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."…

[flagged]

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#524

Post by miju293 »

chmod775 wrote: post #170

Title is a complete lie/misleading. They get a license, not ownership. Let's dissect what it actually says, and we do it backwards, because given the discussion around this subject it seems like people space out or have their mind clouded by outrage before they get to the end of the sentence: > help you [do things] as you indicate with your use of Firefox. So this already only covers things that you indicate you want…

Maybe Mozilla doesn't own that information legally, but they grant themselves practically unlimited rights to do what they want, as the restriction they imposed to themselves ("to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.") couldn't be more wishy-washy.

No difference to me. Goodbye Firefox.

By the way, what alternatives are there for Thunderbird?

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#525

Post by aleph_minus_one »

alt227 wrote: post #498
dogleash wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If only people cared as much about privacy as vegetarians do about not eating meat...

> If only people cared as much about privacy as vegetarians do about not eating meat...

In Germany, a lot of people do (in particular in hacker and IT-affine circles), and I do claim privacy discussions there often do become as heated as discussions with vegans about meat.

This is the reason why in Germany Firefox has a significant market share (according to

> https://www.statista.com/statistics/462158/browsers-most-use...

13.65%).

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#526

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #451

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.

Which network access is telemetry?

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#527

Post by misnome »

apalerwuss wrote: post #511

The problem I have with these kinds of hot-takes is that they often don't tell the full story, and it's seemingly for the purpose of generating rage. For some inexplicable reason, this guy truncates the paragraph from the Terms of Use, repackaging the information without a key part of the final sentence: "....to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."…

> "....to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."

We weren't born yesterday, and companies pull this shit all the time. This sentence is meaningless. You could use this sentence to justify literally any behaviour.

One _easy_ way to read this change:

> "... to help you interact with online content"

Selling your data to have more relevant ads could easily be justified as helping you interact with online content

> as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

Using firefox indicates that you want us to do this.

Or,

we made it an opt-out that is quietly rolled out in an update.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#528

Post by t43562 »

tucnak wrote: post #453
createaccount99 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I think it's just as well not to have a monoculture (i.e. chomium-based-browsers).

Just being different and capable of rendering websites makes the web a place where standards matter. It doesn't have to be noble to make this happen.

Firefox is just standing in there like a marker - as long as there's AN alternative, there's a chance for ANOTHER alternative.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#529

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

wodenokoto wrote: post #517

How does corporate promises work? Like, I used Firefox when they promised never to sell my data. So I should be grandfathered, right?

There's no such thing as a corporate promise. There are such things as legal contracts and lawsuits, neither of which likely apply to anything Mozilla says about their browser.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#530

Post by aleph_minus_one »

nanis wrote: post #500

This is pure speculation, but what are the chances this change is simply an attempt to provide legal cover what they might have started doing 50 versions ago?[1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29082856

According to the tweet, Mozilla claimed

> “Does Firefox sell your personal data?”

> “Nope. Never have, never will.”

I do believe that never is a very, very clear statement (concerning every possible future) that needs no legal cover.

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