The terms were just introduced on Wednesday.

AI Summary:

Overview:

  • Mozilla is updating its new Terms of Use for Firefox due to criticism over unclear language about user data.
  • Original terms seemed to give Mozilla broad ownership of user data, causing concern.
  • Updated terms emphasize limited scope of data interaction, stating Mozilla only needs rights necessary to operate Firefox.
  • Mozilla acknowledges confusion and aims to clarify their intent to make Firefox work without owning user content.
  • Company explains they don’t make blanket claims of “never selling data” due to evolving legal definitions and obligations.
  • Mozilla collects and shares some data with partners to keep Firefox commercially viable, but ensures data is anonymized or shared in aggregate.
    • verdigris@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      The terms were never actually bad. This is them responding to the backlash, yes, but that’s just because everyone freaked out over nothing. They’re not “rolling back” anything, and this comment is just more disinformation.

  • ben@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Too late for me personally, I’ve gone ahead and moved over to Zen.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Friendship ended with Firefox,❎ Librewolf is my new best friend. ✅

      A big problem with such forks (same with packages made by Linux distributors) is that there is a delay between official FF release and the release of the corresponding update of the fork. 99% of the time this doesn’t matter much but when there is a severe security issue, the patch needs to be available ASAP.

      Past enshittifications of Firefox could be disabled by users. Users who know what to disable don’t need such forks then.

      I’m not yet clear what Mozilla even intends. Is it just an adjustment of language of things that are already in FF and can be disabled easily? If so, I just keep the following shit disabled and benefit from earlier update releases.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        A big problem with such forks (same with packages made by Linux distributors) is that there is a delay between official FF release and the release of the corresponding update of the fork.

        That’s called a patched downstream, not a fork.

        LibreOffice was a fork of OpenOffice. OpenBSD was a fork of NetBSD.

      • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        I have not dug too deep into it for now (especially if I end up changing browser), but even with everything in the preferences disabled, examining the content of about:config gives a lot of telemetry.whatever.enabled left to true, sometimes with names that do not seem to match any option given to the user. That’s not a good look either.

        • Kausta@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          And you cannot change those in the default mobile Firefox since about:config is disabled (by their claim that it may break stuff in the ui)

      • FooBarrington@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        The issue is that Mozilla is actively hiding these settings. There’s one (I forgot which one) that you can’t find by searching for the title in the FF settings, you have to scroll to it yourself.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          The issue is that Mozilla is actively hiding these settings.

          They are under “Privacy”, just as I expected where they would.

          There’s one (I forgot which one) that you can’t find by searching for the title in the FF settings, you have to scroll to it yourself.

          🤷

          • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            Yes, you can disable the settings that are exposed to you with a checkbox. How about all the other that have no checkboxes and you can find by snooping around in either the code or about:config ?

            • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              4 months ago

              How about all the other that have no checkboxes and you can find by snooping around in either the code or about:config ?

              Which are? Genuine question. I’m not aware of those either.

              • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                4 months ago

                I’m not going to enumerate them, mostly because I did not keep track of which one was on and which one was off before messing all of them up. If you’re curious, open “about:config” and search for “survey*.enabled”, “collect*.enabled”. Even with all settings disabled, some of them remains on, and they do cause traffic to the (documented) endpoints.

          • FooBarrington@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            Dude, I’m not talking about the specific settings you’ve shown. There’s more settings you should set regarding privacy, and (at least a couple of months ago) one of them wasn’t appearing when searching for it.

    • skankhunt42@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I’ve already moved most of my stuff to forks or different software altogether.

      Firefox -> LibreWolf and Waterfox

      Thunderbird -> Evolution

      I’m still trying to decide if I want to move off k9mail on mobile to something else. I probably will but I’m not sure what at this point.

        • skankhunt42@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          My understanding is that they are all under Mozilla and they’re all in danger of the same business decisions.

          If that’s not the case I’d be more than happy if someone could prove me wrong.

          • Ghoelian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            Technically Firefox is operated by the Mozilla Foundation, and thunderbird by its subsidiary, MZLA Technologies Corp. This subsidiary also took over K-9 a while ago iirc.

    • unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I need a gif where Scooby Doo removes the Librewolf logo and there’s a Firefox logo underneath.

      You must recognize that there is no Librewolf without Firefox, right? In fact, Librewolf even says in their privacy policy that you should also refer to the Firefox Privacy Policy because they can’t be certain that their browser won’t ever try to send data to Mozilla.

      I’m not saying this to deter you from using Librewolf. If it works for you then that’s awesome. It just made me chuckle when you said that you ended your friendship with Firefox and ran into the warm embrace of… Firefox with different default settings.

      In any case, all I’m trying to communicate is that Firefox and all of its many forks are fundamentally reliant on Mozilla and its ability to continue updating Firefox. That means Mozilla needs a sustainable business model, and that we can’t all simply abandon our relationship with Mozilla for a tool that is dependent on the work that Mozilla does.

  • Zak@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Great, but a web browser still does not need terms of service. There’s no ongoing relationship between the user and the creator of the browser, at least, there shouldn’t be unless the user signs up for additional optional services.

    It’s great if Mozilla wants to offer some optional services users can opt in to, and those services probably need terms. I use Firefox Sync, though I’ve started to reconsider that given the recent fuss. The browser itself? I’ll move to a fork first, and stop recommending Firefox to others.

  • heavydust@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I’m eagerly awaiting the new version but I already like it. They now admit that they are sharing and sometimes selling private data (anonymized or not, same thing).

  • Lit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Is there a way to generate fake data to feed to Firefox with an addon?

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      You’re probably just better going with a fork of FF that has all that nonsense stripped out.

    • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      maybe with anti-detection browser, there are with free-bee version, dont know if that will help . which basically lets you use proxies as well, and spoofs your fingerprinting. people who made of accts, or advertise on reddit uses these to evade reddit ban(until reddit made it harder to do so currently)

  • killeronthecorner@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Too late, I switched to Floorp.

    Because of privacy stuff? No. Because of repeated drama? Yes.

    I don’t have time for this stuff. I don’t have time to track every minute twist of the knife that Google’s funding drives Mozilla to embark on.

    I’m bored of using software and watching it go through “death by a thousand minor dramas”

    So now I use a web browser that has a name so stupid I don’t even recommend it to other people. Brilliant.

    • _cryptagion [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Floorp isn’t recommended for its privacy features anyway, it’s recommended by users for the amount of customization you can do. It’s got some features that Firefox has that I don’t want to do without.

    • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Floorp is a new Firefox based browser from Japan with excellent privacy & flexibility.

      💀

    • Gunpachi@lemmings.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Try zen browser. It’s just like floorp but has that Arc browser aesthetic.

      I was a floorp user until I tried zen browser. You should give it a try too.

    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      The drama isn’t exactly their fault. There are a lot of rich organizations that want them to cease to exist. Most 9f which want track you online and/or shove ads down your throat.

      • dnzm@feddit.nlEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        A fair amount of drama is exactly their fault. Mozilla chose to increase management pay and fire people, Mozilla chose to flirt with ai, Mozilla bought an ad firm, and so on. It’s not like someone was holding a knife to their throat.

    • twoface@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Even if the name sounds stupid, you should still recommend it to other people :D

      Have been doing so for a few months and haven’t had any negative feedback.

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    The simple way to deal with this is through extensions. Collect anonymized data through an extension, let the user decide to opt-out if they want.

  • psyspoop@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Mozilla says that “there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners” so that Firefox can be “commercially viable,” but it adds that it spells those out in its privacy notice and works to strip data of potentially identifying information or share it in aggregate.

    Sounds like they’ve already been selling (or trading) data and this whole debacle is a way to retroactively cover their asses.

    • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Yeah. And their privacy notice is basically a mix-match of ten or so sections that have no place in a web browser privacy policy, that allows them to do the things people reproach them for doing.

      It’s like saying “we’re not doing that, because we’re limited by that document that allows us to do just that”. And now they’re tripling down on it.

  • doctortofu@reddthat.comEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    That’s good and I’m genuinely glad they’re trying to clarify it, but it proves yet again that their top management is out of touch with reality and their users: somebody (most likely more than one person actually) had to sign off on these changes and the message they sent out - this whole thing could have been avoided if they understood their users better (and/or if they actually cared nore about what users think).

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Google funding allows them to be big and inefficient, which means a lot of tops paid well and thinking themselves fashionable FOSS leader people or something.

      They can live without it. They’ll have to cut most of the organization and return to being an open project developing a web browser.

      That doesn’t sound cool for people not doing useful work. Like me, I’ll get to my shit instead of typing comments.

  • zecg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I didn’t sell your shit, I collected it and shared it to keep myself comercially viable.