this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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Privacy

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From the new terms:

When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

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[–] RonnyZittledong@lemmy.world 360 points 3 months ago (12 children)

I am so tired of feeling like I have an adversarial relationship with everything in my life

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 76 points 3 months ago (2 children)

It's what's known as "vulture capitalism" or "parasitic capitalism", where sociopathic kleptocrats are allowed control and treat all aspects of life as hostile and adversarial — value must be extracted and stolen from others — rather than a mutually beneficial relationship to improve and enrich the experience for everyone.

This is exemplified by the stock market and "line must go up" — the belief that stable, sustainable profits are a failure and growth must be continuous and exponential, in a planet and civilisation of finite resources, analogous to cancer.

[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 27 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There is even a rumor that, perhaps, no other form of capitalism truly exists.

[–] wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works 16 points 3 months ago

I was about to say that just sounds like capitalism.

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[–] hulfpa@lemmy.ml 36 points 3 months ago

This!!!! All this!

[–] Benjaben@lemmy.world 26 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Hard agree. It does feel like we're entering an age where that may start to shift, though. Well, not so much a shift in the "mainstream", but it feels like we're starting to see more and more parallel products and services that have anti-enshittification built in. And I think that's our best path forward, all of us who care should work towards a parallel ecosystem that cuts these practices out as much as we can.

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[–] GraniteM@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago
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[–] TheMachineStops@discuss.tchncs.de 108 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (8 children)

Firefox "never has and never will" sell your personal data was removed.

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e

It was moved here, but there is no never will: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq

It seems like every company on the web is buying and selling my data. You’re probably no different.

Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.

[–] whelk@lemm.ee 16 points 3 months ago

It felt so weird to upvote this. Thanks for pointing that out, but also uuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggghhhhhhhh

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 3 months ago

Search for firefox-tou.
The presence of that now magically removes mentions of privacy and not selling user-data in multiple places.

-    <p>
-        Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.
-    </p>

+    {% if switch('firefox-tou') %}
+      <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>
+    {% else %}
+      <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>
+    {% endif %}

Difference here is Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data.

-    <h2 class="c-section-title">The best privacy</h2>
+    {% if switch('firefox-tou') %}
+      <h2 class="c-section-title">Always protected</h2>
+    {% else %}
+      <h2 class="c-section-title">The best privacy</h2>
+    {% endif %}

Pivoting from privacy to security in the tos.

-      <li>
-        <h2>{{ ftl('does-firefox-sell') }}</h2>
-        <p>{{ ftl('nope-never-have', url=url('privacy')) }}</p>
-      </li>
+      {% if not switch('firefox-tou') %}
+        <li>
+          <h2>{{ ftl('does-firefox-sell') }}</h2>
+          <p>{{ ftl('nope-never-have', url=url('privacy')) }}</p>
+        </li>
+      {% endif %}

As you mentioned they will apparently sell your data under tos.

Where does the tos apply and where the mpl now?
They would have removed all those mentions of privacy entirely if the mpl had no use anymore, wouldn't they?

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[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 103 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Fuck your Ai and your license agreement. Enshittification stops at no company.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Maybe going from community effort to company driven isn't so great after all. people say that Open source projects need to do that to stay alive or be worth while. Though all that has been happening with companies lately points to a different conclusion.

[–] justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 27 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It seems that every time a group says a project needs to be company driven, they always end up at the top of that company reaping in the profits.

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[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 3 months ago

It was on the horizon ever since the new leadership took over. Sad but predictable.

[–] RejZoR@lemmy.ml 71 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Come on Mozilla, what the fuck are you guys doing? You don't have the luxury of monopoly and you're going to alienate those few diehard fans who stick with Firefox because alternatives are shit and they all run Chromium even if they aren't.

Ladybird needs to materialize fast before it's too late.

I'd go Waterfox, but I really like the on-machine translation in Firefox that Waterfox doesn't have it.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 32 points 3 months ago (13 children)

LibreWolf has the on-machine translation and when you disable some of the hardcore privacy defaults it is a quite good Firefox replacement.

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[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 49 points 3 months ago

So much for being a "private browser." It literally says that on the app store in the title.

[–] excral@feddit.org 36 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Does having a ToS mean that Firefox is no longer FOSS? Freedom 0 of FOSS is: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose". Isn't that violated if you can only use the software under the condition of accepting terms of service?

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 months ago

Arguably no. It's not "you may not use this if you don't agree." It's "the software does this and here is your warning."

Still incredibly fucked.

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[–] DougHolland@lemmy.world 35 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I read the article but still don't understand what this means:

You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet.

When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

I've seen corporate mission statements that were clearer.

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I read it as "you type a URL in the address bar, we'll take you there. You want to search for something using the search bar? We got you, we'll forward your search to the search engine of your choice. All free of charge."

It's just worded in such generic legal wording it makes you gag. But them pointing it out so explicitly just makes me more suspicious lol. I think it's fine for now, just another wall of text to keep an eye on for any future modifications.

[–] DarkSpectrum@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

"help you .... experience ..... content" = Ads

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[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 31 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Fantastic, guess I'll be looking for an alternative to Firefox.

[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 28 points 3 months ago (4 children)

From what I can tell the general consensus is LibreWolf.

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[–] Caspy7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 3 months ago (8 children)

Mozilla updated their post at the top:

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.

[–] lambalicious 19 points 3 months ago

We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible.

You have that! It's implied by provision when you distribute your software under eg.: GPL!

[–] HeartyOfGlass@lemm.ee 19 points 3 months ago

We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible

Gee whizz, like what? What "basic" functionality is missing that can only be solved with a ToS saying they're going to track how I use their browser?

Without it, we couldn't use information typed into Firefox

That's what I needed to see. So it's not missing basic functionality, they just want to make it legal to track your browser usage.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Clarifying literally nothing.

"We couldn't use information typed into Firefox." Good. You don't get that information. My software, on my computer, does. Will some insane new law suggest Notepad spies on users by capturing their keystrokes? No? Then this aggressively vague bullshit is justifying a data-collection scheme. Metadata is still data.

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[–] wizblizz@lemmy.world 29 points 3 months ago

Omfg I'm sick of this bullshit

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I await to see technical enforcement of it. Anyone can write rules on a piece of paper, but without collecting information physically, or having someone enforce it, it's useless words. And so far it seems a lot of people and companies make rules and claims without technological enforcement.

I imagine though at worst you can simply block all of mozilla's domains through /etc/hosts and their IPs or IP range with a firewall rule. Still sucks but you do not need to comply with it, no matter what anyone says. It's the technical aspects that are the most thorny, not the words on a page.


By reading this comment you hearby agree to send Draconic NEO no less than $400 in the currency of AnimalCrossing bells, applies for each time you read it, and re-reads of words also count. You will also be required to stand on your head for 30 minutes for every instance of reading this comment or re-reading a word. Compliance with these terms is mandatory.

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[–] Tenkard@lemmy.ml 22 points 3 months ago

I've always supported Firefox and ignored all the telemetry changes issues, after all you can just disable them in about:config, but after this I think I'll switch to a fork. I installed zen browser, the only thing I want is syncing and extensions

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 22 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Sigh.

Is it so hard to just be an ethical company? Must every product and service become enshittified?

Couldn't they have just made these "features" an add-on that the user can choose to install (and agree to a separate ToS to use), rather than have it baked into the browser code?

There was a time when you could use the same piece of software or service for decades without worry. Now, I feel like I'm replacing software every few months because of enshittification.

[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Is it so hard to just be an ethical company?

Well, assuming by company you mean a for-profit entity, then yes.

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[–] MrWafflesNBacon@lemmy.world 21 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Bruh. Is there a Firefox fork on Android? I have Librewolf on desktop but I don't think they have an Android app sadly.

[–] Lcs_150@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 months ago

Fennec is one for Android. Seems okay so far.

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[–] scholar@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago

Doesn't apply to forks, but still...

[–] Strepto@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 months ago (4 children)

This is unfortunate. I've been advocating for Firefox and managed to switch many of my friends. This is where I draw the line.

Time to switch to something else.

[–] Reviever@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago (4 children)
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