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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

#711

Post by UweSchmidt »

winterbloom wrote: post #662
p0w3n3d wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider a browser as similar as a complicated curl with GUI. Therefore: - when I see that browser does not allow playing video in the background (youtube on mobile phones) - when my browser disallows me blocking certain things - when my browser prevents me from taking screenshot of things I can see on it ... it really angers me, as I feel betrayed. Of course, nowadays, web applications tend to get complicated and…

Disagree It is your device and you are free to not run that code. You can leave Of course this changes if it is something you specifically fund like government websites

Ah, the good old Internet Libertarian.

If only free and enlightened individuals could, through their choices in a market in which everything is allowed, spawn such a diverse set of solutions, or allow true self-help, that every need is met...

...rather than everything consolidating under a few big players who leave few realistic alternatives, who confront users and customers with conflicting and hard to identify or quantify problems. There might just be 3 unreconcilable goals like:

- not allowing Google/Chrome to own the internet outright - have privacy for oneself and others who don't "opt out" - have a browser that is established enough to work on most websites

and you can't tell me what browser to use.

The same issue is present almost everywhere you look: All products have such massive permutations of health, energy, waste, sustainability, ethicical and economical parameters that making a decision is almost impossible for any well-informed individual, let alone for enough people to steer change in any meaningful way.

If you maintaing this sort of "Libertarian" view, make sure you're not inadvertendly serve the interest of corporations that would like to not be criticized nor regulated.

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

#712

Post by lucyjojo »

hellcow wrote: post #38

Since Mozilla removed all mention of not selling my data in a recent PR and seems hellbent on an ad-based future, I've deleted my Firefox account and moved to Librewolf across my devices, and I'll encourage everyone I know to do the same. It's a sad end to my literal decades of support for them.

been using mozilla since i was a teenager and now i'm an old family man...

this whole thing and recent change goes contrary to what i thought they were about.

i'm done with them at this point.

the migration will be painful...

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

#713

Post by xtiansimon »

mnmalst wrote: post #405
_Algernon_ wrote: post #344

>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, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice. From their blog post…

I have no idea what I am talking about but could it be related to future AI related features that process user data locally and/or on their servers? At least that would make some sense to me.

“process user data locally”

Ha! As if slowing down browsing and your computer would have a good result.

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

#714

Post by account-5 »

1cecreamface wrote: post #579
_mitterpach wrote: post #366

Link 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'll keep using firefox simply because I keep it behind a proxy server with all pocket, mozilla, firefox and google domains blocked. The larger impact I suspect this will have in my life, is that I'll increasingly turn to not using websites, opting instead to using tools like yt-dlp. These changes didn't just happen because of a bunch of greedy ad pushers. This and many other changes over the last few decades came ab…

What other tools are you using instead of Firefox and/or a browser?

How does discovery work with tools like yt-dlp?

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

#715

Post by KingOfCoders »

einr wrote: post #707
KingOfCoders wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks didn't know, thought Waterfox etc. were just a new UI on top of Firefox rendering/HTTP/HTTPS/etc. engine and were depending on Firefox development. Didn't know they were forks like the Redis forks for example. Will take another look. "Ungoogled-Chromium" Can't be a fork? Don't they just patch Chromium?

I mean I guess that depends on what you mean by fork? Most of the above projects follow upstream Firefox/Chromium (Pale Moon, for example, doesn't -- but that also means less support for recent web standards) but they are forks in the sense that they maintain the codebase/patchset themselves. How much they actually diverge from upstream varies by project. So you're right that they are dependent on Mozilla for now. Wi…

This is of course very subjective.

With fork I mean, taking the code, forking it, and developing it on your own.

If someone would take the Redis-C lib and the Redis CLI and change it, but keeping Redis unchanged, I would not call that a "Redis fork".

Valkey who is forking Redis and everything, does not depend on Redis (at most cross patching exploits). I would call that a fork.

"Most Firefox code isn't evil."

You are successful, they will change the license, and you're dead - most current fork will not keep up the work because it is too much compared to changing the UI.

"recent web standards" The only reason for these is the cartel of web browser vendors (Google,Apple,Microsoft,Mozilla) to keep out competition. Worked for 10+ years, until Ladybird showed the strategy is flawed.

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

#716

Post by pohuing »

fiverz wrote: post #592
p0w3n3d wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider a browser as similar as a complicated curl with GUI. Therefore: - when I see that browser does not allow playing video in the background (youtube on mobile phones) - when my browser disallows me blocking certain things - when my browser prevents me from taking screenshot of things I can see on it ... it really angers me, as I feel betrayed. Of course, nowadays, web applications tend to get complicated and…

You can actually play YouTube in the background with Firefox on Android. There is two ways, 1. Put the video in full screen mode and then press the system home button, this enabled PiP. 2. Start the video, click onto another tab in Firefox (this will pause the video) but then with that second tab active, open the tab switcher and press the play button beside the other tab with the video. Then it will play in the back…

Or install an add on that blocks the api yt uses to detect if it's in the background. It wrecks my charge though.

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

#718

Post by SJC_Hacker »

sph wrote: post #590
MrAlex94 wrote: post #450

I might have differed with Brendan Eich on a few matters, but he was a good steward of Firefox in my book. When Mitchell Baker took the reins, Mozilla became rather more heavy-handed towards us - the irony being that Waterfox was once proudly displayed on the Mozilla website under their "Powered By" banner. I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces, but they've made some peculiar decisions as of late…

Here's my question: in light of what Mozilla is doing, why don't other forks like Waterfox or Librewolf write a manifesto/contract saying they'll never sell your user data and won't turn "evil" (until they do, of course), and then decide to offer a paid version of their browser. Two possible outcomes: 1. No one cares. No one pays for it. Nothing changes and nobody loses anything. 2. Enough people pay for it to keep t…

Brave https://brave.com/ has been around for a while

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

#719

Post by SJC_Hacker »

thedanbob wrote: post #647

For the last 10 years or so I've pendulum swung between the positions "privacy at all cost!" and "what's the point, you can't win". Well, I'm tired now and the pendulum is stuck on the latter. All I care about now is blocking ads. Go ahead Mozilla, Google, Apple, whoever, if you can hoover up my worthless browsing data without me noticing, you can have it. I hope my reading HN and watching inane Youtube videos is wor…

> I hope my reading HN and watching inane Youtube videos is worth something to you.

Oh it is. It definitely is

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

#720

Post by glenstein »

imiric wrote: post #667
Digit-Al wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen discussions of this sort of wording so many times over the years. My understanding is as follows (and I could be wrong, but this is my understanding of why that wording is used). If you use Firefox to upload a file to a website then, legally speaking,the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file. Because of Draconian laws in many countries, to publish a file you have to have a legal right to the file…

> If you use Firefox to upload a file to a website then, legally speaking,the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file. If that's the way the law is interpreted, it's silly. The "publisher" in this case would be the website the file is uploaded to. If the website doesn't make the file public, then they're not a "publisher". The browser is merely acting as a tool to do the uploading. Firefox shouldn't be held li…

>If that's the way the law is interpreted, it's silly.

It's hard to tell from your comment who exactly is the target of your complaint. You're not wrong that this interpretation might be silly, but that's not out of the ordinary in carefully using terms of art to insulate from legal liability.

And the issue of peculiar terms of art is leagues different from the issue that everyone else seems to be raising that it represents an intent to abuse private data. Those are two completely different conversations, but you're talking about them here like they're the same thing.

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