[HN Gopher] Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notic...
___________________________________________________________________
Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
Author : pentagrama
Score : 138 points
Date : 2025-02-26 17:31 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.mozilla.org)
| tomwphillips wrote:
| >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._
|
| Emphasis added.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| In case anyone is unaware...
|
| https://librewolf.net/
| mozball wrote:
| Genuinely asking : Who is behind librewolf and why should i
| trust them? They don't seem to be available in any official
| repos yet other than ones they self-published
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Who is behind librewolf and why should i trust them?
|
| https://librewolf.net/#core-contributors
|
| They also have links to join other community spaces so you
| can probably ask them yourself.
|
| > They don't seem to be available in any official repos yet
| other than ones they self-published
|
| The only official repos are the ones which the community
| decides are so. https://codeberg.org/librewolf They've been
| around long enough that if they're not on github (for
| example), it's probably intentional. (One can imagine why
| this particular community might prefer to avoid directing
| people to Microsoft-owned github.)
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I'm not sure what you think of as "official", but it's been
| in nixpkgs for years at least. You can also take a look at
| what it's doing. The librewolf repo itself is basically a
| collection of generally small patches. Mostly you've got
| patches to change branding and remove antifeatures, plus
| fixes like preventing pages from detecting you've opened
| devtools and enabling JXL support.
| mozball wrote:
| I mean nixpkgs is the largest linux repo there is.[1] I
| think anyone can upload a package, similar to AUR :
|
| [1] - https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total
|
| edit : By official i meant something backed by and
| guaranteed by a reputed org, like Debian's official repo,
| RedHat or Arch's Core Repo.
| mcflubbins wrote:
| I was unaware, thank you!
| Lio wrote:
| I've read that a few times now and I'm trying to decide what I
| think they are actually asking for. It's a bit too vague to pin
| down.
|
| Mozilla does not need a world wide royalty free licence to use
| anyone's content if the browser is just a pipe through which
| connect to the web.
|
| So what exactly are they going to use that licence to your
| content for and how long are they going to retain it?
|
| Mozilla does a lot of talking about creepy behaviour. Maybe
| it's just the wording of this but so far it feels a bit off to
| me.
| schalkneethling wrote:
| Mozilla.ai
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| I'll admit to being utterly confused by literally the first
| part, even before the emphasis. What follows is nitpicky, but
| I'd imagine every word is there for a reason. What does
| "operate" really mean in this context?
|
| Mozilla(the corporate entity) is operating(=controlling?)
| Firefox(the software) on my machine?
|
| Mozilla(the corporate entity) is operating Firefox(whatever
| corporate subdivision on their side) to further my interests as
| a user (gather telemetry, error reports, "privacy preserving"
| data about me)? In that case, does "acting on your behalf" mean
| that the corporate entity is browsing on my behalf? Can I
| download all the Metallica mp3s using Firefox and forward all
| happiness letters to Mozilla since they were acting on my
| behalf? (I know, I know, "You Are Responsible..." section
| disagrees with my take)
|
| And that's before approaching the can of worms of granting a
| license which I may or may not be able to do depending on the
| original license.
| McDyver wrote:
| > Mozilla collects certain data, like technical and settings
| data, to provide the core functionality of the Firefox browser
| and associated services, _distinguish your device from others_
| [...]
|
| So we are granting them worldwide royalty-free licence to
| identify us uniquely and transfer that info to others.
|
| Not the best privacy protection or control, and yet they claim
| "At Mozilla, we believe that privacy is fundamental"
| ykonstant wrote:
| This is bonkers, utter insanity. Read defensively (which is the
| only safe way to read legal text), this renders Firefox
| unsuitable for any sensitive communication: prima facie,
| accepting this means I violate FERPA when I talk to my students
| via email through Firefox. Most likely health professionals
| would violate HIPAA by using Firefox in a similar manner.
| Furthermore, this has to violate at least the spirit of GDPR in
| the EU where I am located.
|
| What is this absolute clusterfuck? No, I do not consent to any
| of that. Which, if any, update, informed me of this change in
| policy? And how on earth do my data, and which data, pass
| through Mozilla's servers?
| anticensor wrote:
| Unbranded forks of Firefox are not covered by that terms of
| service document.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| That looks like end of road for FF for me.
|
| Have to see what other people (serious people) make of it, but
| that looks like a deal breaker. That's 100% spying on
| everything I do, because FF has a copy of it.
|
| "Input information" on the face of it can be taken to mean
| moving the pointer, clicking, scrolling.
| mcflubbins wrote:
| I hate to say that I am probably in the same boat.
|
| Mozilla is totally out of touch with their users. Going to
| give LibreWolf a try for a while I guess.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Can someone please explain why they'd need that? Sure, if
| Firefox sends the data to Mozilla, I can see why they'd might
| need that type of language. It's just that Firefox is a desktop
| application, why would it need to send my input to anyone
| besides the site I'm using?
| fwn wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I'm no expert, but this seems to imply that if your government
| bans accessing the internet (for you, for a subset of people, or
| for everyone), using Firefox through a VPN is unacceptable to
| Mozilla? Why would Mozilla proactively side with autocrats?
|
| The "acceptable use" policy they are talking about (
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/ ) lists
| heinous actions such as to "send unsolicited communication" and
| to "display ... content that includes graphic depictions of ...
| violence". Is Mozilla targeting journalists here?
|
| I sometimes suspect that there is a strong correlation between
| the effortlessness with which an organisation receives funding
| and how out of touch it is with reality.
| baobun wrote:
| Previous version:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250219051713/https://www.mozil...
|
| New version: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/
|
| > Firefox also shares information with our marketing partners to
| measure and improve these campaigns; what information is
| specifically shared varies (depending on how you discovered
| Firefox and your operating system) but generally includes how you
| were referred to our download page and whether you actively use
| Firefox. Where Firefox is pre-installed on your device, technical
| and interaction data (your device type and whether Firefox is
| used) will be sent to our marketing partners, and shared with
| Mozilla. Learn more about what is collected and shared, and how
| to opt out.
|
| This is new (There's no link or further reference for that "learn
| more" in context)
| baobun wrote:
| This is also new, and very broad and unqualified:
|
| > We may also be required to process your personal data to
| comply with applicable laws and protection purposes, such as:
|
| > (...)
|
| > Identifying, investigating and addressing potential
| fraudulent activities, or other harmful activities such as
| illegal activities, cyberattacks or intellectual property
| infringement (including filing or defending legal claims).
|
| > Performing internal compliance and security activities, such
| as audits and enterprise security management.
|
| ---
|
| Being US, how far stretch is it to imagine PII being under
| scope for some anti-DEI (aka anti-terror) audit? Also you
| better switch browsers if you'll ever be in a lawsuit with
| Mozilla I guess...
| irq-1 wrote:
| A detailed listing of whats collected and why:
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#lawful-bases
| sunshine-o wrote:
| The problem with Firefox is it almost impossible to sell today
| (compared to 10 or 20 years ago).
|
| - It doesn't have better performance or security.
|
| - If you want better privacy and ad-blocking out of the box,
| Brave is the way to go.
|
| - The "supporting an independent implementation" argument doesn't
| really resonate anymore.
|
| I am wondering if the small market share it has left on desktop
| (especially in Europe and Germany) might be due to governments
| and corporations installing it on their computers.
| worik wrote:
| I'm sorry mate, that does not make sense
|
| I am appalled by this change, but I am not switching to Brave.
| Mozilla is loosing trust, Brave started with zero.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| Only very few people are aware or care about the drama
| between Mozilla and Brave.
|
| Most people will only trust the Data safety / Data Privacy
| section on the Play / App store (as they should):
|
| - Firefox on Android: This app may share these data types
| with third parties: Location, Personal info and 3 others [0]
|
| - Firefox on iOS: The following data may be collected and
| linked to your identity: Contact Info.
|
| Data Not Linked to You. The following data may be collected
| but it is not linked to your identity: Location, Identifiers,
| Usage Data, Diagnostics [1]
|
| - Brave on Android: No data shared with third parties, No
| data collected [2]
|
| - Brave on iOS: No data shared with third parties, No data
| collected [3]
|
| Data Not Linked to You. The following data may be collected
| but it is not linked to your identity: Identifiers, Usage
| Data [4]
|
| It's evident, Brave collect way less data than Firefox on
| those platforms.
|
| Maybe the problem of Mozilla is they feel entitled to the
| trust they gained when they were the open source browser
| against IE. But that trust erodes over time.
|
| - [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozil
| la.fi...
|
| - [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-private-safe-
| browser/
|
| - [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brave
| .brow...
|
| - [3] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brave-browser-search-
| engine/
| tmottabr wrote:
| Developers that fill those informations.. So then saying
| over there that they do not collect does not mean they are
| not collecting something..
|
| Also, Brave has already broken trust multiple times..
|
| https://www.coindesk.com/business/2020/06/08/brave-
| browsers-...
|
| https://www.searchenginejournal.com/brave-browser-under-
| fire...
|
| https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-browser-installs-vpn-
| wi...
|
| https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/
|
| I do not trust Brave in a million years and would never
| replace Firefox with it..
|
| Also, i bet that most people do not even know or look at
| those privacy information at the store.. although i agree
| they should..
| ImJamal wrote:
| Mozilla has broken trust multiple times as well. If you
| don't trust Brave because of that, then how on earth are
| you trusting Mozilla?
| worik wrote:
| I do not trust the scetchy guy running it
|
| I do not trust their relationship with crypto
|
| I do not trust their business model
| ozornin wrote:
| > the scetchy guy running it
|
| You mean Brandon Eich, the author of JavaScript and co-
| founder of Mozilla? Why?
|
| The other two points I 100% agree with.
| ImJamal wrote:
| The sketchy guy was the CEO of Mozilla and created
| JavaScript. If you don't trust him then why did you trust
| Mozilla when he was in charge?
|
| I'm not sold on their crypto, but one thing is clear.
| Browsers need to stop getting the majority of their
| funding from big tech, especially Google. Maybe crypto is
| not the right way, but at least they are doing something.
|
| Why do you trust the business practices of Mozilla who
| gets most of their funding from Google?
| lurk2 wrote:
| I tried using Brave ages ago. I wanted to like it, but it
| crashed even more often than Firefox (which is a feat unto
| itself) and didn't have the option to tag bookmarks.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > but it crashed even more often than Firefox (which is a
| feat unto itself)
|
| Er, you maybe should check your RAM and GPU. I've run Firefox
| on a _lot_ of different systems, with everything from vanilla
| profiles and no saved tabs to loads of extensions and
| literally thousands of tabs, and it basically never crashes.
| Well, the beta version can be a little less stable, but...
| beta version. Could just be that I 'm lucky or you're
| unlucky, but I'd strongly suggest checking your hardware and
| maybe GPU drivers.
| foresto wrote:
| > Mozilla grants you a personal, non-exclusive license to install
| and use the "Executable Code" version of the Firefox web browser,
| which is the ready-to-run version of Firefox from an authorized
| source that you can open and use right away.
|
| Does this mean these Terms of Use apply only to precompiled
| binaries downloaded from Mozilla, and not to copies built from
| source code by linux distributions?
|
| > 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.
|
| Does this mean they're allowed to collect data that we transmit
| through Firefox to the sites we visit, so long as they can come
| up with some justification that they're using it to "help" us?
|
| > Every once in a while, Mozilla may decide to update these
| Terms. We will post the updated Terms online. We will take your
| continued use of Firefox as acceptance of such changes.
|
| This kind of one-sided nonsense is something I have come to
| expect from the likes of Google or Facebook.
|
| I don't know how all this will shake out, but my initial
| impression leaves me with waning respect for Mozilla.
| mimasama wrote:
| > Does this mean these Terms of Use apply only to precompiled
| binaries downloaded from Mozilla, and not to copies built from
| source code by linux distributions?
|
| I think it applies if the browser is "Firefox" in name and
| branding. So the Debian rebuilds count for example.
|
| So recompile and remove the Firefox branding and the ToU should
| definitely no longer cover you.
| foresto wrote:
| This commit looks particularly bad:
|
| https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
|
| Notably, this was deleted from the Firefox FAQ on 2025-02-25:
|
| > Does Firefox sell your personal data?
|
| > Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of
| the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to
| protect your privacy. That's a promise.
| bwidlar wrote:
| [...] 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.
| sksrbWgbfK wrote:
| > Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla's Acceptable Use Policy
|
| > [you may not] Violate the copyright, trademark, patent, or
| other intellectual property rights of others
|
| In the near future they'll upload a blacklist to everyone that
| prevents us from accessing bad sites such as TPB. It's way worse
| than what we've seen before.
| goldsteinq wrote:
| ELI5: how is any of this legal? Let's say my distro receives
| Firefox source code under the terms of MPL, builds it and
| distributes it to me under the same terms. At no point any of us
| agreed to any additional terms. Does this apply only to Mozilla-
| built binaries?
| winkelmann wrote:
| An interesting implication of this is that it would point to
| Firefox being considered a service from Mozilla (hence why they
| need a license to facilitate your use of the program).
|
| If we now look at their "Acceptable Use Policy", we can find
| this:
|
| > You may not use any of Mozilla's services to [...] Upload,
| download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that
| includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence, [...]
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/
|
| And to corroborate the applicability of the Acceptable Use Policy
| to the Firefox browser:
|
| > Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla's Acceptable Use
| Policy, [...]
|
| ("Acceptable Use Policy" is hyperlinked to the aforementioned
| page)
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
|
| So one could interpret this all to say that you're not allowed to
| view or download porn via Firefox. Additionally, "graphic
| depictions of violence" could extend to things like the sort of
| bodycam footage and reporting from war zones frequently seen in
| news reports.
| rightbyte wrote:
| It is really unfortunate.
|
| My Firefox install lately added links to what could be
| considered not so nice sites for grandmas like amazon.com and
| hotels.com to the start screen.
|
| It is quite clear they see it as their program not mine
| program.
|
| I dunno for how long I will stick to using the least worst
| alternative. To go for custom builds would be giving up on
| Mozilla.
|
| edit: Toned down language
| winkelmann wrote:
| Yeah, it's annoying, but also nothing particularly new I
| believe. There seem to be two types of garbage links added by
| default:
|
| 1. "Sponsored shortcuts" that can be "easily" turned off in
| `about:preferences#home`
|
| 2. I guess "non-sponsored" shortcuts? I believe they pointed
| to Facebook, eBay, and something else (Pinterest maybe).
| Those have to be removed/"blocked" individually. I think they
| end up in `browser.newtabpage.blocked` after doing so.
|
| I don't like that this is a thing I have to do whenever I set
| up a new Firefox install. It's not often, to be fair, but it
| still sucks nonetheless.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye that feels like trying to unmess a Windows install.
|
| I have like 6 Firefox installs I need to do this on. And
| then they add the next thing to block in 2 years.
|
| I think the old premade bookmarks are as far as you can go
| with these kind of things. Takes like 2s to remove and you
| know how instinctivly.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _scam sites like amazon.com_
|
| Since when is Amazon a _scam site_?
|
| I don't like em' either, but hyperbole doesn't help.
|
| For what it's worth, it can be removed in about 4 seconds.
| renewedrebecca wrote:
| > For what it's worth, it can be removed in about 4
| seconds.
|
| Sure, but why should anyone have to?
| ziddoap wrote:
| Look, I hate ads as much as the next person.
|
| But Firefox also needs to generate money somehow, right?
| A small advert to amazon/hotels/whatever that can be
| removed basically permanently with a small change in the
| settings is about the best balance I can think of.
|
| If you donate to Mozilla, I have more sympathy for you.
| Perhaps they could make it so that if you have a Firefox
| account linked to a donation that they remove this, or
| something.
| happymellon wrote:
| I have struggled to find methods as an individual to
| donate to Firefox.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/donate/
| diggan wrote:
| I'm fairly sure that's for donating to Mozilla, where the
| funds go who knows where (kidding, it goes to the
| executives and marketing).
|
| Is there anywhere I can donate to Firefox, specifically
| the development and the maintenance of the browser
| itself, and only the browser? Maybe donating directly to
| developers working on Firefox would be the best approach
| here.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Nope! In fact, last I heard, donations to the Mozilla
| _Foundation_ could not be used at all for the browser,
| which is developed by the Mozilla _Corporation_.
| e2le wrote:
| That's for donations to the Mozilla foundation, they
| aren't used to fund development of Firefox. Mozilla
| corporation and Mozilla foundation are distinct entities.
| imagetic wrote:
| Same.
|
| They should have offered us monthly services that made
| sense. Long long ago.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> But Firefox also needs to generate money somehow,
| right?_
|
| WHY? They get hundreds of millions a year to place Google
| as the default search engine. That's a _shit ton_ of
| money. At that level they could even put some away every
| year for an endowment. Why does a nonprofit need to
| generate even _more_ money by violating its users?
| bmn__ wrote:
| Money is drying up because Google is being ordered to
| terminate the deal, and they refused to save it and
| rather spend it on flights to Zambia to make a festival
| session about "feminist AI alliance for climate justice"
| "centering on LGBTQIA+ individuals". Their words, not
| mine.
|
| See videos 4 months old or younger:
| https://www.youtube.com/@Lunduke/search?query=mozilla
| diggan wrote:
| Never hear of that person before, but before listening to
| anyone, I like to go through their material to see if
| they at least give the impression of a balanced and
| impartial person.
|
| > The company made popular by making modular laptops now
| makes a desktop with soldered-on RAM. Bonus: They appear
| to support targeting children with Trans cartoons.
|
| https://lunduke.substack.com/p/framework-
| unveils-2000-non-up...
|
| > Leftist Extremists Leave Linux Kernel, Demand
| Conservatives Be Banned
|
| > Leftist Linux developers demand those with wrong
| politics "be removed". "Right-wing people are not
| welcomed," says one. "You can [CENSORED] right off from
| my projects," the other.
|
| https://lunduke.substack.com/p/leftist-extremists-leave-
| linu...
|
| In this case, it seems they are neither balanced nor
| impartial, so beware people who chose to engage with
| that. It seems Lunduke is yet another culture-warrior
| masquerading like "The last bastion of truly independent
| Tech Journalism". I'm sure they get lots of traffic from
| it, but it's not really a reliable source for facts.
| bmn__ wrote:
| Why shoot the messenger? Not a rhetorical question,
| answer it if you are able to.
|
| diggan, your way of thinking needs to face strong
| criticism. It brings you into the realm of make-belief
| and delusion and turns you away from the truth. Dealing
| with the trappings instead of the essence of things is no
| way to live in this world. Be level-headed and apply
| rationality, otherwise I predict you will see supposed
| enemies hiding behind every stone and then it will end
| badly for you.
|
| FWIW, anyone can follow to the sources in order to come
| to the same summary, or through interpretation to the
| same conclusions. It only takes half a minute with a Web
| search and see that B.L. indeed is a reliable transmitter
| of facts. It took you longer to sow the FUD than to
| simply do the verification! *smh*
|
| Here are the sources:
|
| * https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/TKUXAQ-1
|
| *
| https://xcancel.com/bazzite_gg/status/1887913668182163478
|
| * https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2025-Feb
| ruary...
|
| *
| https://chaos.social/@karolherbst#:~:text=not%20welcomed
|
| * https://web.archive.org/web/20240619223519/https://soci
| al.tr...
| ziddoap wrote:
| It is not "sowing FUD" to mention that someone has a
| history of posting ridiculously emotionally charged
| headlines/content, and point out that that habit might
| also color the truthfulness of their reporting.
| bmn__ wrote:
| Yes, it is. I have shown the sources, and thus quite
| demonstrably refuted diggan's claim of Uncertainty at the
| end of his post. The other parts of his post are very
| much emotional appeal, trying to get a HN reader to feel
| Fear and Doubt.
|
| You seem to want to join in into same self-deception and
| denial of reality. Don't do this any more, it just brings
| suffering.
|
| It is a good thing that we all have the freedom to check
| the veracity, and do not have trust gatekeepers and do
| not have to short-circuit by taking anyone's word.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _You seem to want to join in into same self-deception
| and denial of reality._
|
| No, I just avoid "journalism" from people who only post
| with wildly emotionally charged language. If the
| reporting speaks for itself, you don't need to prime my
| feelings with your headlines or interpretations.
|
| > _Don 't do this any more, it just brings suffering._
|
| Your moralizing is tiring to read.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > Yes, it is.
|
| No it isn't
| serf wrote:
| fine, but applying that method to journalism will
| essentially run you out of trustworthy sources to gather
| news and information from the very same day.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Not at all.
|
| For one, it's a continuum, not a binary thing.
|
| Second, for topics I care about, I look at multiple
| outlets and/or their reported sources so that I can
| hopefully isolate the facts and form my own opinion.
|
| And yes, for each outlet I weigh their reporting by how
| much emotionally charged language they use. Or in this
| case, whether they shoehorn something about trans people
| into an article about RAM in addition to the other
| emotionally charged language.
| shakow wrote:
| Outside of all this culture war stuff, on a much more
| tangible subject, I guarantee you that for the money they
| sank in their flashy Paris headquarters[1,2] (thousands
| of m2 in one of the fanciest areas), they could have paid
| for hundreds of man-years in very decent French engineers
| wages.
|
| Let's be honest, they just spent the Google money like if
| there was no tomorrow, and an individual that won't even
| see from afar that much money in my whole life, I won't
| be donating to save them from their pitiful financial
| choices.
|
| [1] https://www.mellett-
| architects.com/en/portfolio/mozilla/ [2]
| https://blog.mozilla.org/places/2013/03/27/mozilla-paris-
| fin...
| diggan wrote:
| Sure, I agree with Mozilla not being the greatest steward
| (as written minutes before the comment you responded to:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43195286), I'd much
| more like Firefox split off from Firefox.
|
| But regardless of our feelings for Mozilla being one way
| or another, listening to authors who clearly are over-
| emotional about subjects isn't a way to learn more.
| shakow wrote:
| > listening to authors who clearly are over-emotional
| about subjects isn't a way to learn more.
|
| Independently of the guy's own politics (I only know his
| "Linux Sucks" videos), he is directly citing an official
| Mozilla[1] document.
|
| [1] https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/schedule?isRecor
| ded=tru...
| account42 wrote:
| There is no such thing as balanced as that implies a
| natural neutral point. It's like saying you want to hear
| arguments both for and agains murdering children. All
| you're doing is filtering for people that conform to YOUR
| pre-conceived notions.
| diggan wrote:
| > There is no such thing as balanced as that implies a
| natural neutral point
|
| It does not, professional journalists are able to provide
| two different points of views in their articles, granted
| they work for a professional publication. I'm not sure
| where you're from, but seemingly it isn't very popular in
| the US, but in other countries it does exist.
|
| > All you're doing is filtering for people that conform
| to YOUR pre-conceived notions.
|
| I'm trying to filter away people using overly emotional
| language, regardless of their political or moral
| leanings. I don't care if you're up, right, down or left,
| using clickbait language gives me reservations about even
| listening to the author.
| account42 wrote:
| Firefox is supposedly owned by a nonprofit organization
| that's expected to act in the user's interest.
|
| Nonprofits are supposed to raise funds from donations and
| grants, not via enshittification for the primary subject
| of their mission.
|
| The problem is that besides being a supposed nonprofit
| (Mozilla foundation), the same people also want to larp
| as a sillicon valley tech business (Mozzilla corp which
| largely shares leadership with the org) with insanely
| high saleries funded anti-user bullshit.
| sevensor wrote:
| Considering how hard it is to avoid dodgy counterfeit
| merchandise in certain product categories, that seems like
| an apt description.
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| https://www.onlyamazingseller.com/us.html
| nosioptar wrote:
| I've still received counterfeits that were sold and
| shipped by amazon.
| avgd wrote:
| Inventory commingling ruined any respect I had for them.
| They've done that for a long time but I still am beyond
| pissed by the trend they started of being a front for
| third party sellers, all French retailers copied them
| (darty, fnac, cdiscount etc) and searching for products
| sold by trustworthy entities on the internet is now a
| nightmare.
|
| Everyone imitates the market leader so it really feels as
| if competition doesn't exist as an alternative to amazon
| here. They're all as bad, and sometimes worse.
| nosioptar wrote:
| I think the worst is when you spend extra to buy from
| someone that isn't amazon and the item shows up in an
| amazon box with an amazon receipt.
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| Damn, really? That's very troubling
| sevensor wrote:
| I'm not clear on how this solves the problem.
| Counterfeits can be hard to detect. Counterfeit food,
| toiletries, and electronics can poison you or start a
| fire. And my redress is a generous return policy?
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| Amazon receives inventory directly from manufacturers.
| Third party sellers are significantly more likely to sell
| counterfeit products
|
| Same reason you're not likely going to find counterfeit
| goods on the shelves of a Target or Costco
| jamesdwilson wrote:
| they have a history of "comingling" goods that claim to
| be from the manufacturer but sometimes are not.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| Amazon has been a scam site for years.
|
| Counterfeit products sold by Amazon.
|
| Most reviews are purchased.
|
| Stolen product pages.
|
| Product pages where the reviews are for totally different
| products
|
| If you report any of these things to Amazon, they do
| nothing about it.
| rightbyte wrote:
| That is debatable if that is hyperbole but I might be
| moving the discussion a bit too much off topic so ye maybe
| more neutral language would have been preferable.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Scam site was probably not very precise.
|
| They have enshittified, and they don't have a quality anti-
| abuse team so many items, while not directly fraudulent are
| fraud-u-lish.
|
| Commingled inventory means you can't expect the item you
| get to be the item you ordered because there is no supply
| chain integrity.
|
| Honestly, after typing that out, I don't think scam was as
| wrong as it first seemed. I frequently feel deceived when
| using amazon.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Amazon doesn't even particularly care whether the items
| they sell are even legal in the country where they sell
| them.
|
| FRS radios for example. Fine in the USA, not fine in
| Australia where those frequencies are used for public
| safety radio systems, and where they are illegal to
| possess because they don't comply with the applicable EMC
| standards.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| It's a bit off topic I guess, but I actually see that as
| a fringe benefit as opposed to a drawback. Other than
| some exceptional edge cases I'm opposed to item
| possession itself being illegal - it all comes down to
| usage. (To be clear, I'm not opposed to strict ID
| recording requirements in some not-quite-as-exceptional
| edge cases.)
| kbelder wrote:
| Honestly, I regard that as a plus.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Causing a mess for legitimate users of the radiofrequency
| spectrum, and exposing unwitting customers to prosecution
| is a plus?
|
| To be clear, you can buy equivalent products on UHF CB
| frequencies locally, that you can use without interfering
| with ambulance services for the same price.
|
| This is legislation that exists for a very good reason.
| serf wrote:
| buying the thing doesn't do that.
|
| abusing the thing in the wrong region does.
|
| question : why isn't this a matter of national
| import/export control? Why is that duty falling onto
| Amazon?
|
| if Amazon was selling black-tar heroin I would have more
| questions than "Why is Amazon selling this? How dare
| they."
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Because Amazon has a legal duty under consumer law to
| only sell goods which are fit for purpose, be of
| acceptable quality etc. It would be hard to describe a
| thing that is unlawful to use in the market it was sold
| as being fit for purpose.
| account42 wrote:
| It's hardly hyperbole at this point:
|
| - Letting sellers replace listings with completely
| different products while keeping the ratings.
|
| - Not providing any way to filter dodgy chinese sellers
| that spam search results with duplicates of the same cheap
| shit.
|
| - Comingling inventory so that even if you take care to
| select a trustworthy seller you might get stuff from a
| dodgy one.
|
| And no, being able to remove the scam ads is not good
| enough.
| manbart wrote:
| Use LibreWolf. It's just firebox rebuilt and released with
| better defaults (no suggestions/spying)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Firefox has Mozilla facilitated services in it, and the license
| is saying " we get to use the data we see to help the service".
|
| I don't think their AUP considers the browser software a
| service.
| winkelmann wrote:
| > I don't think their AUP considers the browser software a
| service.
|
| One would think so, right? But why does Mozilla want me to
| "license" to them everything I "upload or input [...] through
| Firefox"[1]. Where do the "facilitated services" start and
| where do they end? It sure would be nice if they could draw
| that distinction, without it, the cautious interpretation
| would be that that _everything_ is a facilitated service.
|
| [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
| fwn wrote:
| > I don't think their AUP considers the browser software a
| service.
|
| It is not just about their services! They clarify it by
| writing: "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." Src.: https://www.mozilla.org/en-
| US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
| mtzaldo wrote:
| Isn't the internet for pr0n?
| singlow wrote:
| I don't read it the way you say. The more restrictive terms are
| for use of services. If you use firefox, you have to agree not
| to use the Mozilla services for the prohibited categories, but
| there are many uses of the browser that are not using Mozilla
| services.
|
| If you accessed graphic content using the browser, you are not
| violating the terms unless you put that content up on a mozilla
| service somewhere. The obvious issue would be some type of
| bookmark sync. If you bookmarked a graphic url you might
| violate the terms when it syncs to mozilla, but even then it
| would be hard to argue that you are granting access to your
| future self, so unless you used a bookmark sharing service
| provided by mozilla, I would say its a gray area. So disable
| bookmark sync. I typically disable all external services in my
| browser so this would not be relevant.
|
| But my point is that even though you have to agree to the use
| policy when downloading the browser, it doesn't mean it governs
| all use of the browser.
|
| IANAL
| krunck wrote:
| > You may not use any of Mozilla's services to: Do anything
| illegal or otherwise violate applicable law,
|
| No civil disobedience. Bad Mozilla! Bad, bad Mozilla!
| xena wrote:
| I hate it when people get angry about this exact term of phrase.
| This is the legal definition of how user generated content works.
| What they're really saying is "if you upload anything to us,
| we're allowed to distribute it either back to you, or to other
| people". Yet another case of false panic.
| pwdisswordfishz wrote:
| The terms do not mention being limited to uploading stuff to
| Mozilla.
| Daril wrote:
| Exactly, I agree. In fact they declare : "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."
|
| They reserve the right to use every bit of information we
| type into the browser, which is pretty scary. It means they
| read and collect every bit of information we input in the
| browser ... think for example the text we input in a webmail
| app or in a home banking app ...
|
| Time to switch to LibreWolf and Mullvad Browser.
| quesera wrote:
| > _It means they read and collect every bit of information
| we input in the browser_
|
| It does _not_ mean that.
|
| It means some lawyer is concerned that Mozilla is in
| possession of some kind of data that is subject to other
| regulatory claims in some country.
|
| This could easily be trivial, benign, or wrong.
|
| I'll be shocked if a clarification/correction is not issued
| within 24 hours.
|
| And I'll be shocked if some portion of HN doesn't argue
| that the clarification is a coverup and now that we've seen
| the real Mozilla we can never trust them again and we
| should all use Chrome because if we're going to get eaten
| we should all be eaten by the same monster.
| Daril wrote:
| "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."
|
| Why should I give them the right to read the input I type
| or the upload I submit through Firefox (for example to a
| private web application) and use it to help me to do what
| exactly ?
|
| They want collect the data we insert (private and
| personal) and sell them to the advertisers or to AI
| engines.
| Daril wrote:
| > It means some lawyer is concerned that Mozilla is in
| possession of some kind of data that is subject to other
| regulatory claims in some country.
|
| Well ... they posses our data indeed ? And what ? The
| passwords _should_ be encrypted and not available to
| them, Pocket is only a collection of links ... our
| bookmarks ? If they posses some other data it means they
| act as a middle man between the keyboard and the site we
| are visiting ...
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Can you please cite the part that you think corresponds to what
| you claim?
|
| To me the words
|
| > When you upload or input information through Firefox
|
| Indicate this is not only about uploading to them, but also
| just using Firefox to upload anything to somewhere.
| mozball wrote:
| If people are misinterpreting mozilla's legalese, that is
| mozilla's fault for making these terms vague, broad and easy to
| misinterpret. Also i am not convinced your interpretation is
| correct.
|
| Mozilla Firefox didn't have a 'Terms of Use' for 20 years. Why
| now?
|
| Its quite clear they're seeking to expand their rights over
| their users data with their new privacy policy while
| simultaneously reducing user rights with this new 'Terms of
| Use'. i.e. Enshitification
| hellcow wrote:
| 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.
| kace91 wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this change, do you have a link?
| hellcow wrote:
| The phrase "we don't sell access to your data" has been
| removed, gated behind a feature flag connected to this TOS
| change. Their FAQ was updated to remove the "Does Firefox
| sell your personal data? Nope. Never have, never will. And we
| protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox
| products are designed to protect your privacy. That's a
| promise" as well. [0]
|
| Combined with their blog posts from the CEO saying "we also
| need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-
| respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term."
| [1]
|
| [0] https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d81
| 44b...
|
| [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-
| growt...
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Mozilla doesn't sell data about you, and we don't buy
| data about you._
|
| Is still present on https://www.mozilla.org/en-
| US/privacy/faq/
| ilyagr wrote:
| I'm curious whether it changed in the last two hours, but
| now it sounds a lot less clear. Also, it sheds some light
| of how people at Mozilla currently think about it (so
| much so that I'm guessing the text will change again):
|
| > 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).
|
| *Update:* Here's the version from Feb 6 that says exactly
| what the parent comment posted: https://web.archive.org/w
| eb/20250206184553/https://www.mozil...
| ziddoap wrote:
| Indeed, it was updated from the time I posted my first
| reply and now.
|
| At the time I copy/pasted, the answer was a single line
| (as shown in your archive link).
| ilyagr wrote:
| Good to know, thanks!
|
| I'd be mildly surprised if the current version remains
| unchanged for a long time. It raises the question of "how
| do I determine whether I'm one of the 'most people' who
| wouldn't think of you as selling my data", and I doubt
| they'll want to answer that.
|
| I wish there was a way to tell the Wayback Machine to do
| a snapshot for historical preservation.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _I wish there was a way to tell the Wayback Machine to
| do a snapshot for historical preservation._
|
| You can, and I just submitted the
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/ URL.
|
| At the top of the page, click "Web". On the right-hand
| side of the menu that appears, you'll see:
|
| _" Save Page Now
|
| Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted
| citation in the future."_
|
| And a spot to enter the URL.
|
| Resulting snapshot for today: https://web.archive.org/web
| /20250227182726/https://www.mozil...
| ilyagr wrote:
| Nice, thank you again!
| mediumsmart wrote:
| I use librewolf with privacy badger on macos (best browser)
| except when I have to run on battery - then its Orion (also the
| best browser).
| 0x2a wrote:
| I use a Firefox fork too, but do you think it would continue to
| be around without Mozilla?
|
| It's sad to see them squander an opportunity to do good work.
| Mozilla should have gone all-in on ethics/privacy in contrast
| to tech giants and made an offering like Proton. Or gone with
| the Wikipedia donate model like another commenter said. Any
| compromise on their values is insane mismanagement, that was
| their whole brand.
| johnea wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of Mozilla foundation's revenue is
| from Goggle corps.
|
| For making goggle the default search engine.
|
| So they aren't really "in contrast to tech giants" in any
| way.
| hellcow wrote:
| I don't know. I'm hoping that after their attempts at
| building an ad network fail, they pivot back to developing a
| browser by focusing on features their users actually want. Or
| maybe by the time Mozilla fails another alternative springs
| up, like Ladybird.
|
| To your point, cloning Proton is such an obvious path forward
| to generate revenue while staying true to their values. Even
| selling a Firefox Pro with an annual fee offering some
| developer-specific or power-user features would be great.
| Fnoord wrote:
| They tried that with Mozilla VPN. It used Mullvad under the
| hood (a very good Swedish VPN provider), was tailored
| towards USA, and I could not use a config manually. Which
| meant I paid a year for nothing. Not the same as donation,
| but still.
|
| Together with certain other services, like Password manager
| and Firefox Accounts, they could indeed go with your
| suggestion. However, I really do not want my EU data under
| a US business or non-profit. I want my data under EU laws,
| or European at least (Norway, Switzerland are also OK).
|
| IMO, Mozilla should team up with Kagi. They have the
| numbers of users, and Kagi has the excellent product.
| kennysoona wrote:
| > I use a Firefox fork too
|
| If not LibreWolf then what? The rest seem out of date or
| worse than Firefox in some way.
| 0x2a wrote:
| Zen Browser, it's still beta software imo but tab grouping
| and vertical tabs have become must-have features for me
| (another thing Mozilla should be working on).
| lucyjojo wrote:
| 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...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Does librewolf maintain their own browser engine? I thought it
| was just a repackaged Firefox fork?
|
| As for your Firefox account, you could consider hosting your
| own sync server. The documentation for it is of varying
| quality, but you can keep your data off Mozilla's servers
| without sacrificing some pretty useful functionality.
| mozball wrote:
| Disabled auto-update until this is clarified or alternatives can
| be found.
|
| I for one don't agree to these 'terms of use'. If people are
| failing to understand Mozilla's legalese, it is Mozilla's fault
| for making them ambiguous and difficult to understand. They
| earned 650 million dollars last year. Surely they have the
| resources for the task.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I would expect half of that is funding developers for their
| numerous different projects. How naive would that assumption
| be?
| mozball wrote:
| You seem to be in the ballpark : "260 million for 'software
| development expenses'" :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
|
| Still that leaves ~ 400 million dollars for a privacy policy
| that doesn't read like it came from a sleazy big-tech
| company.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Do be aware of the missing security updates if you follow this
| advice
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| > Remember that to display, edit, transform (underline,
| italicize, fonts) the documents you write in MacWrite necessarily
| requires copying your document data from disk to memory to cpu to
| memory to display - lots of copying. Did Claris need the rights
| to your copyright to allow you to edit your documents in its
| software?
|
| This analogy doesn't hold water in the context of giving the
| coparty access to your intellectual property and detracts from
| the point the author is trying to make. The answer is no,
| obviously, because Claris never _had_ the information. The only
| place that information existed was in some software that lived on
| and only on your machine did that processing at your request.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Yet, modern mobile app stores insist on a privacy policy _even
| if_ you don 't send data to a server owned by the app vendor.
| diggan wrote:
| Couldn't you add a privacy policy that states just that?
| "This application doesn't send/save/process/use any user
| data" for example, should be a valid privacy policy if that's
| true.
| TingPing wrote:
| Yes. I've used that in my software. App stores just require
| a policy.
| Apreche wrote:
| There are valid criticisms to make of these ToS.
|
| However, if someone is going to stop using Firefox because of
| these new terms, I would assume that person is already not using
| any products or services from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta,
| etc. Seems pretty hypocritical otherwise.
| roblabla wrote:
| The type of product/service matters here. We're talking about a
| browser here, with the name "User Agent" being popularized by
| Mozilla,for fuck's sake.
|
| I don't use Google or meta services. I do use apple's and
| Microsoft's OS, but last time I checked, neither of those
| required me to give a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide
| license to Microsoft or Apple for all the data that I input
| into their OS - even when it goes through the TCP stack. Yet
| this is what Mozilla has in their own license. (and yes, before
| you ask, I did review the macOS TOS. You can find them here if
| you're interested:
| https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSSequoia.pdf)
|
| For all their problems, MS/Apple TOS are usually for things
| that interact with their services. Here, firefox's new TOS is
| ridiculously wide and touches things that do not interact with
| Mozilla's services, for no reason.
|
| So, no, I do not see the hypocrisy.
| noirscape wrote:
| There's also a matter of trust; Google, Apple, Microsoft and
| Meta are trustworthy in the sense that I have an expectation
| of them that's already fairly negative insofar as user
| privacy is concerned. The correct response to "Google tracks
| you" isn't one of shock, it's one of acknowledgement because
| it's to be expected at this point. Google hasn't ever
| pretended that they aren't selling your profile to the
| highest bidder, so while I have issues with that, they're
| more in the sense of "it should be illegal to do this in
| general" rather than "I could never have foreseen this
| outcome". Same with Microsoft, Meta and _especially_ Apple.
|
| Mozilla _was_ operating under a different set of expectations
| up to this point - they always made a big deal of protecting
| the user from bad actors, put privacy pretty front and center
| (in the sense of not selling your shit to data brokers /using
| it for advertising) and in general were fairly reliable on
| that. This dynamic seems to be shifting in a new direction
| that's closer to the other four mentioned companies and
| that's violating the trust they've build up over the years.
| It makes you wonder what Mozillas word is now worth and what
| it'll be worth in the future.
|
| Hence why people are considering leaving; trust is a pretty
| major factor in that sort of decision. It arrives by foot (is
| hard to gain) but leaves by horse (is easy to lose).
| bbarnett wrote:
| Those companies are known to be privacy hostile companies.
| Mozilla/Firefox, not. In fact, Mozilla claims the reverse!
|
| For them to abandon privacy, is a betrayal, it's backstabbing
| behaviour. Feeling betrayed and wanting nothing to do with said
| software, as a result, seems normal to me.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Or in slightly different terms: If I wasn't using Chrome
| because of privacy issues, then Firefox losing the privacy
| advantage means they just ditched the only reason I was still
| using their product.
| ziddoap wrote:
| _If_ Mozilla is abandoning their pro-privacy stance, they
| still have at least one thing (in my opinion) going for
| them over Chrome: Manifest V2 extensions. For now, at
| least.
| sejje wrote:
| If I'm using a worse product (arguable, I know--depends on use-
| case) for their virtue signaling, and they quit even
| pretending...
|
| I might just choose the best browser, then.
| nh2 wrote:
| > You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox
|
| Wait, now Mozilla operates Firefox for me and I can just lean
| back while they do the browsing?
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
|
| > When you upload or input information through Firefox, you
| hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license
|
| Really the whole document looks like it was copy-pasted from some
| SaaS template.
|
| Does Mozilla not have a lawyer that reviewed this who knows what
| a browser is?
| dvaun wrote:
| Sounds like a license to train on your data.
| drpossum wrote:
| This is exactly it. They're covering their bases as they roll
| out AI garbage no one asked for.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Wait, now Mozilla operates Firefox for me and I can just lean
| back while they do the browsing?
|
| Yea, this is the root "shitty attitude:" This idea that
| programs 1. running on my computer, 2. loaded from my hard
| drive, 3. into my RAM, 4. outputting to my monitor, are, in
| reality "Operated by [COMPANY]." Fuck that. Just because you
| wrote the software, doesn't mean you're "operating" it. I don't
| want an ongoing relationship with my products' vendors. Their
| role is to make it and distribute it to me, from that point on,
| butt out!
| noirscape wrote:
| While I think the anger surrounding this is slightly overstated,
| is there any Desktop fork of Firefox that can essentially just
| act as a "we prevent Mozilla from doing anything harmful to it's
| users", while compromising on as little functionality as
| possible? There's only so many stories of Mozilla deliberately
| trying to reduce it's browser market share to zero you can put up
| with before you start looking elsewhere.
|
| I'm thinking something in the same vein as Iceraven, which is a
| fork of the Android version of Firefox that aims to make the
| browser more usable for humans instead of servicing the overly
| restrictive mobile environment/tracking that's bog-standard in
| most mobile platforms.
|
| I considered Librewolf, but it's willingness to break pages in
| the name of excessive anti-fingerprinting (the RFP mode breaks a
| lot of interactables) and ideology (blocking DRM) makes it kind
| of unacceptable for this purpose. I guess I'm not looking for a
| privacy fork, just a fork that protects me as a user from anti-
| features (with widevine in specific not being an anti-feature; I
| don't like widevine either, but it's kind of necessary for using
| a browser these days.)
| zefalt wrote:
| Floorp may be what you're looking for. Pretty similar to native
| Firefox.
|
| https://floorp.app/
| noirscape wrote:
| Oh interesting, I'll check it out.
|
| Searching around a bit, this fork does seem to meet the
| criteria I was looking for (plus a few hidden ones like
| project age; it's a couple years old and still being updated,
| which means the dev is willing to put the work in as opposed
| to abandoning it when they get bored). The blocker on
| widevine being Googles fault (while still supporting L3 out
| of the box) rather than deliberate "we're not even going to
| try" is much more acceptable than the Librewolf one.
| kennysoona wrote:
| > The blocker on widevine being Googles fault (while still
| supporting L3 out of the box) rather than deliberate "we're
| not even going to try" is much more acceptable than the
| Librewolf one.
|
| I don't know, I think not caving in to support some
| proprietary BS is pretty justifiable.
| noirscape wrote:
| Proprietary or non-proprietary isn't something I
| particularly care for (maybe 10 years ago I'd have cared,
| but I'm just a good deal more cynical these days I
| suppose). I just want a browser that works and doesn't
| actively try to screw me over.
|
| There's nothing stopping Mozilla's current descent into
| stupidity just because Firefox is non-proprietary free
| software; they have enough engineers and manpower on
| their end to overtake any forks in development speed
| (which limits any forks to trying to stay in sync with
| either upstream or ESR.) Chromium is as a browser non-
| proprietary too, but that didn't stop Google from getting
| rid of declarativeNetRequest, leaving the forks mostly
| powerless to do anything about it because they can't hard
| fork Chromium.
| account42 wrote:
| Blocking DRM is the only sane stance. And if you are using a
| free OS it doesn't change much anyway as DRMed content is only
| available in resolutions that might have been acceptable
| decades ago. If you must consume that kind of content just use
| a dedicated device but better would be to ignore it or acquire
| copies with the DRM stripped.
|
| DRM is absolutely not necessary for using a browser.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Mozilla needs to learn that when you're an operation running
| honestly as a non-profit and no one's getting rich (comfortable
| != rich, btw), there's nothing wrong with the donate nag in a
| blank new tab.
|
| Wikipedia figured that out long ago. They probably wouldn't be
| around without that nag box asking for donations.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| however are the cost of developing a web browser and hosting an
| internet encyclopedia ran by volunteer comparable ?
|
| mozilla use paid labor, engineer who are very expensive.
| wikipedia it's mostly hosting a html page and a few media.
|
| Yet wikipedia has much more user to whom it can show the
| donation nag when mozilla has a much more limited userbase.
|
| i think that mozilla taking google money to put them as default
| search engine is fine, people who care about privacy are
| allowed to change it whenever they want.
| janc_ wrote:
| In 2023 the Wikimedia Foundation had 700 paid
| employees/contractors working for them.
|
| At the end of 2023 Mozilla Corporation had 964 employees and
| Mozilla Foundation had 118.
|
| So the difference isn't that large...
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Google - mozilla contract alone gives mozilla 500 000 000$.
|
| Wikimedia budget is 170 000 000$.
|
| I'm sure that developing a browser is more expensive, would
| mozilla be able to make it work with at best a third of the
| budget ? I don't think so..
| drpossum wrote:
| There _is_ something deeply wrong with the donate nag: The
| money goes to funding Mozilla-branded nonsense (e.g. misguided
| adventures into the VPN space), overpaid executives and bloated
| administration (as they actively shed developers [1][2]), and
| not the browser.
|
| I would considering donating except I can't donate to support
| what I would like to support.
|
| [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-
| growt...
|
| [2]
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/06/mozilla_foundation_la...
| lenerdenator wrote:
| That's the other problem:
|
| Mozilla just needs to focus on Firefox.
|
| Something about doing one thing and doing it well...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Firefox needs to be its own thing. At this point all the
| "Mozilla Foundation" and "Mozilla Corporation" stuff and
| all the side quest software everyone seems to be rat-holing
| on, have nothing to do with making a great alternative
| browser.
| 0x2a wrote:
| I wouldn't have a problem with Mozilla doing other things
| if they did it well and it didn't involve them compromising
| on their values.
| 0x2a wrote:
| Isn't the Mozilla Foundation (non-profit org) distinct from
| Mozilla Corporation?
| userbinator wrote:
| _overpaid executives and bloated administration_
|
| It sounds like Mozilla needs to be DOGE'd too.
|
| Edit: this was what came to mind: https://www.reddit.com/r/fi
| refox/comments/lswv11/my_firefox_...
| account42 wrote:
| Wikipedia is really not a good example here. They ask for way
| more than they need to run Wikipedia itself.
|
| Personally, I refuse to let any nagware on my computer. Free
| software is supposed to be a better experience than shareware.
| hedora wrote:
| So, is firefox no longer open source?
|
| If it is open source, how do I compile and use it without
| agreeing to the terms of use?
|
| (I have no interest in using their "services".)
| butz wrote:
| Remember the time, when browsers were competing who will load
| website fastest or who will render Acid2 test correctly? Those
| were the days.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That was great, except everyone just installed chrome because
| the website google told them to and put them right back in the
| exact monopoly position that allowed IE6 to stagnate.
|
| If you use chrome still, you are literally part of the problem.
| I still think Mozilla, just barely treading into the
| advertising waters, is probably a better option than the
| literal advertising panopticon that owns our world and data.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > everyone just installed chrome because the website google
| told them to
|
| I believe we actually went this way because all the techies
| adopted it first, not because it was some evil overlord that
| told everyone to. As a teenager, I installed it for some of
| my family because it had fewer knobs to push than Firefox at
| the time and it was faster at the time so that was cool as
| well (especially because they usually had older devices).
| Can't install toolbars in there etc. Then came Google's
| cross-site tracking by tricking users into logging into the
| browser and such. I kept using Firefox myself because I was
| used to the dev tools, theme customizability, and powerful
| add-ons, but it's not like I didn't contribute to the problem
|
| That said, I also still wonder how (as you hint at) them
| advertising a product of theirs on the search engine
| homepage, a legal monopoly afaik, is not abuse of market
| power to illegally create a second monopoly. Firefox and any
| legit browser vendor who asks should be able to get the same
| ad on there for the same duration (years iirc, perhaps on and
| off), prominence, freedom of wording, etc. There is certainly
| an advertising aspect to get the last bit of the market,
| create a real brand name ("oh yeah I know that icon" when
| it's shown in the ads, not just know that button on your
| screen as "the internet"), but the first >50%... I don't know
| Fnoord wrote:
| > That was great, except everyone just installed chrome [...]
|
| Just to note the Acid 2 test was released April 2005 [1], and
| Google Chrome from December 2008 [2]. That's about 3,5 years.
|
| At _some_ point (around these mentioned years), Mozilla
| Firefox had a very good market share since MSIE 's was
| dwindling, Safari's was minor (no iOS yet), and Google Chrome
| did not yet exist. Those were the days ;)
|
| Also, Safari only exists due to Konqueror (and its
| dependencies), and Chrome only exists due to Safari, and
| Konqueror.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome
| account42 wrote:
| Safari exists because Apple wanted a Browser they control.
| They absolutely would have had the capability to create a
| rendering engine from scratch - KHTML already existing was
| just a minor convenience.
| account42 wrote:
| "If you choose the slightly less evil browser you are
| literally part of the problem".
|
| Yeah no, both are shit. Mozilla is also literally an
| advertising company now besides being almost exclusively
| funded by one.
|
| If Mozilla wants people to choose Firefox over other browsers
| based on principles they first need to stick to principles
| themselves. Why are you asking people to give up anything
| (even if it's just a small amount of convenience) for a
| company that is run pretty much the same way as the
| alternatives, run by a CEO whining about a salary of millions
| per year not being enough. They made their bed.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| So my bank password is now licensed to mozilla? This is not
| great...
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Firefox's own about:license page (reachable through the about
| firefox dialog) says the sources are available under a wide
| variety of open source licenses. Does that mean only Mozilla
| distributed binaries are governed by the "Firefox Terms of Use"?
| If I download Firefox through my distro package manager, and the
| distro infrastructure compiled and distributed it undet the terms
| of the open source licenses, presumably I may use the software
| solely under the terms of those open source licenses.
|
| Does Mozilla take this into account, or do they act as if they
| have the rights they assert in the ToU, regardless of what
| license a Firefox user is using the software under?
| janc_ wrote:
| "Mozilla" & "Firefox" are trademarks which would come with
| their own legalese I'm sure, and of course there are some
| services used by Firefox (the Mozilla addons store, the malware
| blacklists managed by Google IIRC, etc.) that would still
| require legal statements even for distro or other 3rd party
| builds.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Sure, but neither Distribution Policy for Mozilla Software[1]
| nor Mozilla Trademark Guidelines[2] make any mention of the
| Terms of Use. Services Firefox connects to have their own
| Terms of Service, like you say, but those are unrealated to
| Terms of Use for Firefox itself.
|
| [1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-
| US/foundation/trademarks/distribu...
|
| [2]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-
| US/foundation/trademarks/policy/
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > Does that mean only Mozilla distributed binaries are governed
| by the "Firefox Terms of Use"?
|
| It means that usage of binaries is governed by the terms set by
| whoever produces and distributes them.
|
| If your distro leaves the "Firefox Terms of Use" notice intact
| then I imagine it would be in force. The only exception that
| immediately comes to mind would be if the distro explicitly
| relicensed Firefox under the GPL (I'm not clear if this is
| permitted or not) in which case the GPL explicitly invalidates
| any such additional restrictions.
|
| If your distro provides a binary that includes inaccurate,
| conflicting, or otherwise problematic terms, such as (ex) on
| the about:license page, then that would be on them, not on
| Mozilla.
|
| If your distro removes or modifies the license terms permitting
| Mozilla to collect data but forgets to modify the data
| collection code itself, I'm not sure who is at fault.
| Presumably the distro maintainers. However, given that the
| entire thing is very clearly without warranty I doubt that
| you'd have any recourse. In any case I don't think Mozilla
| would be breaking any rules since they neither compiled nor
| distributed the binary in question.
|
| Off topic, but one minor issue I noticed is that the
| about:license page doesn't seem to include either a link to or
| a copy of the GPLv3 despite the fact that the LGPLv3 states:
|
| > c) For a Combined Work that displays copyright notices during
| execution, include the copyright notice for the Library among
| these notices, as well as a reference directing the user to the
| copies of the GNU GPL and this license document.
| bmacho wrote:
| So, what are the forks?
| natch wrote:
| Disclaiming ownership is not enough. Making the supposed license
| that users supposedly grant more limited would be a step. Yes I
| saw it has some qualifiers but they are not protective enough of
| the user.
| BlackFly wrote:
| Remember, "Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives
| processing difficulty in legal language."*
|
| You see that here. Mozilla chose to use legalese and not plain
| language, despite there being a movement afoot to try to push
| (and in some cases legally require) for plain language in legal
| documents. This one isn't so bad, since they mostly avoid passive
| voice and don't needlessly capitalize much. Maybe the low
| frequency jargon is necessary but look at those center
| embeddings... - you upload or input information
| through Firefox with your use of Firefox - When you upload
| or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a
| nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license with your use of
| Firefox - When you upload or input information through
| Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free,
| worldwide license to use that information with your use of
| Firefox. - 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 with your use of
| Firefox. - 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.
|
| Break it into multiple sentences.
|
| First sentence establishes you input data into firefox when you
| use firefox (obviously, but maybe not to everyone!). Second
| clause establishes that when you input that data you give firefox
| a license to that data which you otherwise own (this could be
| more clear in a separate sentence). Third clause establishes that
| the license is to use the information (not to sell it). Fourth
| clause establishes that they will use it to help you navigate,
| experience and interact with online content. Fifth clause (as you
| indicate) establishes that it is your use of firefox that
| indicates your intention and how they should use your input to
| help you. As five separate sentences they could make it seem much
| more reasonable. The embeddings are instead ineffective because
| they aren't referring to a common category but instead modify an
| aspect of the former clause.
|
| * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001002772...
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| The term itself is bad here. The problem isn't just because
| it's hard to understand.
|
| > Second clause establishes that when you input that data you
| give firefox a license to that data which you otherwise own
|
| Firefox doesn't need a license, because it's not a legal
| entity; it's software acting on behalf of a person (the user).
|
| Mozilla doesn't need a license to all information input through
| Firefox, because Mozilla doesn't need that data for Firefox to
| operate.
| BlackFly wrote:
| It isn't just software: https://support.mozilla.org/en-
| US/kb/access-mozilla-services...
|
| I will maintain it is an issue of clarity. Your argument is
| that Mozilla isn't offering online services but this isn't
| true and clarifying what actions upload information and
| exactly how that information would be used would mollify
| this. The list would probably be quite extensive. Moreover,
| the clause doesn't necessarily give them a license to all
| information input through firefox and that clarification
| should be demanded of them.
| mimasama wrote:
| The ToU is clearly referring to the browser, not the other
| products of the Firefox brand family. The literal first two
| paragraphs:
|
| > Firefox is free and open source web browser software,
| built by a community of thousands from all over the world.
|
| > Please read these Terms of Use ("Terms") carefully
| because they explain important information about using your
| copy of the Firefox software. These Terms are a binding
| agreement between Mozilla Corporation ("Mozilla") and You.
| For details about Firefox privacy practices, please read
| the Firefox Privacy Notice.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Firefox'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 Firefox at all.
| Mozilla doesn't need any rights for Firefox to process my data
| locally on my behalf, or even for Firefox to send my data to
| third parties on my behalf (ex. instant search suggestions).
| Those aren't Mozilla using my information; those are me using my
| information using Firefox.
|
| They would only "need" extra rights to collect data and process
| it on their servers for unspecified purposes. They do
| legitimately process some data on their servers, such as Firefox
| Sync data, but that's already covered under the Mozilla account
| terms of service. There's no need for a broad license for all
| data going through Firefox.
|
| [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-
| news/fi...
| mimasama wrote:
| Yeah, it would be like saying everything I write and draw into
| my Acer laptop means I now give permission for Acer the company
| to use my content. It's bonkers.
| account42 wrote:
| 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.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| firefox is an open source software, i know it's great to bash it
| with the many questionable decisions they take but at the end
| it's still the least worst web browser and no one is entitled to
| having a free, ads free and privacy respecting web browser.
|
| the author shows that mozilla royalty-free, worldwide license TOS
| change is now similar to what google always had with chrome.
|
| To me as long as i understand the business model of mozilla,
| which is quite precarious but still, and it doesn't have some
| funny connections going in and out, i'm fine with their TOS
| change.
|
| It's not the best but what you gonna do anyway ? chrome is
| chrome, 99% of the alternative are still running google chrome
| under the hood which give google insane leverage. Safari is at
| the mercy of apple dictatorship on the extension support. and
| that's all.
|
| maybe once google is forbidden to give money to mozilla to choose
| the default search engine we will see real change in web browser
| choice, for instance it could fasten the agonizing mozilla death
| and prompt privacy or even just power user (as people who want to
| be able to block ads everywhere, not only where google mv3 allows
| it) to pay to develop, maintain and ultimately use a web browser.
| ewzimm wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious about your leverage comment. Lots of
| people base their browsers on the open source Chromium project.
| They rely on Google for the source, but they aren't indebted in
| any way the company. They're essentially just forking the
| source every time they update.
|
| On the other hand, Mozilla develops their own source code but
| is almost entirely funded by Google. They are looking for
| alternative funding, but does receiving all your paychecks from
| a company give them less leverage over you than freely copying
| their code? I'm not convinced.
|
| I'm sad to see Firefox take this direction, but they've been
| going in a bad direction for a long time, and this is a bit too
| far for me. Deleted it everywhere. Personally, I like Falkon
| and Vivaldi. Jon von Tetzchner may not release all his source,
| but he has a great track record over decades of browser
| development, and that kind of earned trust is something Mozilla
| has not been fostering lately. He has never demonstrated that
| Google, Microsoft or anyone else has "insane leverage" over him
| or his companies and wasn't afraid to walk away from Opera when
| he didn't like the direction. We need more of that in the
| browser space.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I think this argument is tired.
|
| Mozilla is making decisions in lockstep with Google around
| privacy in the browser.
|
| Chromium is _also_ open source software, and you 'll note that
| several forks of that codebase don't have this "we're going to
| train AI models on literally everything you do online" clause.
|
| Hell - Firefox itself has several forks which are also less
| invasive.
|
| ---
|
| > but at the end it's still the least worst web browser and no
| one is entitled to having a free, ads free and privacy
| respecting web browser.
|
| No one is entitled to this - yet there are a good number of
| people who go out of their way to make this available. Use one
| of their tools instead of pretending that Mozilla is being "the
| good guy" here. They absolutely are not.
| account42 wrote:
| > no one is entitled to having a free, ads free and privacy
| respecting web browser
|
| I disagree. As governments and society at large are
| increasingly requiring you to be online for basic tasks we do
| owe it to make sure people have a user agent that doesn't come
| with strings attached.
| butz wrote:
| If someone already deleted Firefox Sync and wants to get rid of
| Sync item in main menu, you can disable it by going to
| "about:config" and setting "identity.fxaccounts.enabled" to
| false.
| r0uv3n wrote:
| AFAIU Firefox Sync is end to end encrypted, right? I
| interpreted the language here to mean that the data might be
| sent to Firefox outside of Firefox Sync. Have there been any
| changes to Firefox Sync that we know about?
| igor47 wrote:
| 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 wrote, feel free to use it as a template:
|
| Dear Mozilla,
|
| I'm not just a long-time user of Firefox -- I'm a Firefox
| promoter. I've been recommending Firefox to all my friends, esp.
| since the Chrome privacy fiasco. I even pay for Mozilla Monitor
| just to support your organization.
|
| I ABSOLUTELY object to your new Firefox terms of use. I DO NOT
| grant Mozilla any soft of license to information I "upload or
| input [...] through Firefox". This change is alarming and
| hostile. If you insist on rolling it out, there should be a clear
| opt-out in the browser itself. I strongly urge you to reconsider.
| Otherwise, I will be moving to forks, and urging others to do the
| same.
|
| Sincerely,
| account42 wrote:
| > 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 <--- you are here
|
| 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.
| drpossum wrote:
| Mozilla's messaging for the last few months has really reminded
| me of the old anti-smoking ads from the 2000s. Technically
| performing their responsibility, but actually extremely obnoxious
| _because the people behind the funding didn 't agree with its
| existence and actively degraded it for their own survival_.
| waltercool wrote:
| Wht does Open Source needs any terms of use?
|
| This is into the opposite direction about what "free open-source"
| means.
|
| You get that software into your computer, you are entitled to
| free unrestricted use or modify in any way you want.
|
| Except by the Firefox trademark of course.
| ulfbert_inc wrote:
| I wonder if LibreWolf is of any help with those (and previous)
| changes. Would love to see LibreWolf maintainers chime in on
| this.
| okanat wrote:
| Great. We need to sue Mozilla to death for GDPR violation, it
| seems. I guessed Mozilla would eventually die, but not like this.
| rascul wrote:
| This is concerning.
|
| From the new Tos:
|
| > 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.
|
| I do not want Mozilla to use or have information I type into
| Firefox except when I explicitly give them such information. I
| disable all the settings I can to keep Mozilla from getting any
| such information.
|
| From what I understand, this crap is only for the Mozilla
| distributed binaries. So I will now be using third party builds.
| mimasama wrote:
| Make sure the third party build you choose doesn't use official
| Firefox branding too.
| MaximilianEmel wrote:
| We need an open and independent alternative to Firefox Sync.
| ilyagr wrote:
| Sibling discussion (might be worth unifying):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43194536
| kragen wrote:
| > _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._
|
| It's bad that it says that, because the "us" in this sentence
| should absolutely not be doing anything that requires such a
| license, and should not have a copy of it in order to do so; but
| "Mozilla owns" is also not a correct summary of it.
| lunarmony wrote:
| why does this require "a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide
| license"?
| kevingadd wrote:
| Speculatively:
|
| - nonexclusive, because they're not demanding exclusive
| rights to your content. If they did, there's no way this
| would fly.
|
| - royalty free, because otherwise you could charge them money
| for doing anything with your data, even things you've asked
| them to do.
|
| - worldwide, because you may ask them to communicate with
| servers in other countries. i.e. you are using Firefox Sync
| to sync your bookmarks and you travel overseas, your
| bookmarks are now traveling between two countries.
|
| The question is "why do they need a license at all", IMO. The
| qualifiers on the license all make sense to me. It's possible
| additional qualifiers like 'short-term' could make it less
| scary.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Anyone think this is to afford the ability to run a remote AI
| service which provides services that would be improbable to run
| locally?
| kazinator wrote:
| > _Mozilla can suspend or end anyone's access to Firefox at any
| time for any reason, including if Mozilla decides not to offer
| Firefox anymore._
|
| On what planet is that free, open source?
|
| Can you imagine: "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) can suspend
| anyone's access to GNU Emacs at any time for any reason,
| including if the FSF decides not to offer GNU Emacs any more".
| kevingadd wrote:
| This likely refers to Firefox-the-product, not Firefox-the-
| open-source-project since there's no functional way to revoke
| your access to a mercurial checkout on your PC.
|
| It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with
| revocation or termination clauses, either. I recall seeing ones
| that basically say "If you file a patent suit around this open
| software, your rights to use it are gone".
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with
| revocation or termination clauses, either. I recall seeing
| ones that basically say "If you file a patent suit around
| this open software, your rights to use it are gone".
|
| Trying to take back the license based on use of the software,
| however, would make it not "open source", since that would be
| use restriction.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Mozilla has had their own dedicated license - the Mozilla
| Public License - for as long as I remember. My
| understanding is that FF and Thunderbird's source code are
| both still under this license.
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/
|
| Whether or not the MPL counts as 'open source' is a
| question for the people who steward that term, I guess. But
| they've not been using a Standard Open Source License for a
| while.
| chippiewill wrote:
| It's OSI approved which is about as official as 'open
| source' gets: https://opensource.org/license/mpl-2-0
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" It's not unprecedented to have an open source license
| with revocation or termination clauses,"_
|
| Yes, but aside from jokes[0] it's unprecedented for an OSS
| license to attempt to restrain the purposes for which end-
| users use software. That's incompatible with the definition
| of free software ("free", as in "freedom").
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSLint#License
|
| - _" Before that, the JSLint license[4] was a derivative of
| the MIT License.[5] The sole modification was the addition of
| the line "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."_
|
| - _" According to the Free Software Foundation, this previous
| clause made the original license non-free."_
| havaloc wrote:
| Let's not forget this post:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210109032814/https://blog.mozi...
| ipython wrote:
| What's wrong with transparency for advertisements? If you
| take offense to the "boosting" of news sites, I see the point
| but now we have Elon arbitrarily boosting his own content on
| X.
|
| Not sure how you end up solving that issue other than perhaps
| a more transparent system like the original Birdwatch.
| DecoySalamander wrote:
| This post was what finally pushed me to switch after years of
| growing dissatisfaction.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Judging from nearby wording, this is primarily geared towards
| the Firefox account stuff as opposed to the Firefox browser.
|
| (I'm not happy with Mozilla's decision to name everything
| Firefox, it makes things like this confusing.)
| kbenson wrote:
| 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 brand name to refer to a singular component of
| their offerings.
| jcranmer wrote:
| 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
| does the legal system suck, but Mozilla tries to pitch
| Firefox as a privacy-favoring alternative, and looks-like-
| everybody-else legal boilerplate absolutely undermines that
| pitch and more.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| 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.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If that was the intention, the correct term would have been
| "Mozilla's services". The very first sentence of that
| document defines Firefox: "Firefox is free and open source
| web browser software".
| ykonstant wrote:
| As a non-legal word of advice: when reading legal text,
| always read defensively. Never assume good will when legal
| matters are concerned.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Here's the remaining paragraph:
|
| > If we decide to suspend or end your access, we will try to
| notify you at the email address associated with your account or
| the next time you attempt to access your account
|
| It seems like this is not about the browser itself, but rather
| about Firefox accounts. The wording is pretty ambiguous,
| though.
| avsteele wrote:
| Since it's mostly just people who care about this privacy who
| still use Firefox, these changes seem particularly tin eared.
| plagiarist wrote:
| People who care about privacy have already moved on to
| LibreWolf or some other Firefox alternative.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Not true. I was under the impression that Firefox was a
| privacy-oriented browser until these Terms were published
| today. I'm now posting this from LibreWolf, which I have just
| now installed for the first time.
| 5g4545g4ghhhh wrote:
| Fuck it I am going back to Internet Explorer.
| czk wrote:
| Is there a "brave" browser that uses Firefox?
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| There is a Brave browser.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I'd go with Ungoogled Chromium at that point.
| czk wrote:
| I'm kind of addicted to tab containers right now and I have
| them set up in a way where I can proxy specific containers
| out different socks proxies that go through different VPN
| tunnels. Niche I know but it's keeping me on FF.
| Rafuino wrote:
| OMG do you have a writeup on how you do that?
| excalq wrote:
| Tab containers are a godsend when managing multiple AWS
| accounts as well.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Or separating tabs in personal / Work A / Work B
| contexts. Containers are a poweruser feature.
| bradyd wrote:
| AWS now supports multi-session logins, so you can log in
| with multiple accounts simultaneously.
| kbenson wrote:
| I think what was being asked is if there's something like
| Brave that doesn't use a webkit derived back-end. Good
| defaults and a good stance on privacy is one reason to use
| Brave and historically Firefox, but another is that it keeps
| the browser ecosystem from being too homogeneous. Firefox is
| the last browser with over sub-percent market share, and even
| then it's less than 3%, so it's almost gone.
|
| A case can be made that many of the browsers split from
| webkit (or split from things that split from webkit) long
| enough ago that there is competition, but IMO that's a far
| cry from a fully independent solution.
| czk wrote:
| This exactly! Apologies for not being more clear.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Yes, though I've never used it: https://librewolf.net/
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I've had good luck with LibreWolf on Windows
| themaninthedark wrote:
| IceCat, maybe?
|
| I too am looking for alternatives.
|
| Official site: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
|
| Binary build available here but not official:
|
| https://icecatbrowser.org/index.html
|
| edit:
|
| I linked to a non-official site first, added the official site
| and made clear that the site offering binarys is non-official.
| mkbkn wrote:
| Zen browser https://zen-browser.app/
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| For which OS? Waterfox is nice https://waterfox.net
| oceanhaiyang wrote:
| What choice do we have then?
| infogulch wrote:
| I guess Brave is the best we have until something more complete
| comes out of this crop of new browser engines like ladybird.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Chromium and a bunch of its forks, all the Firefox forks, Gnome
| Web (Epiphany), Falkon, Ladybird, probably a bunch of others I
| don't know about...
| userbinator wrote:
| 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
| includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence"
|
| It's against the Terms of Use to use Firefox to... watch porn?
|
| Either their legal team made a mistake, in which case they should
| correct it and issue an apology ASAP, or they really do intend to
| own you, in which case I recommend switching to an alternative
| browser which is _only a browser_ , like Dillo, Ladybird, or
| Netsurf.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > It's against the Terms of Use to use Firefox to... watch
| porn?
|
| Firefox isn't a Mozilla service. The Mozilla services are
| things like account sync, or the review tool they use.
| laszlokorte wrote:
| So what about synced bookmarks?
| pentagrama wrote:
| And synced history.
| kevingadd wrote:
| If you're syncing a bookmark that is somehow illegal
| content, it would come to rest on their servers and they'd
| potentially be liable for it. (IIRC they encrypt everything
| at rest, so this is a speculative risk)
| llm_trw wrote:
| Porn is not illegal, either are the Rambo movies.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Depictions of sexuality or violence are legal in most
| places, even if said depictions are graphic
| tiltowait wrote:
| I wouldn't expect the bookmark to run afoul of this clause,
| since the bookmark isn't the content. Now it'd be a curious
| case if the bookmark contained a base64-encoded
| pornographic image.
| smolder wrote:
| You seem to be assuming competence on the part of the
| author. But, as is common with documents that lawyers
| generate, they probably don't care if it's reasonable or
| if practically every one of their users violates it. Like
| when you get an employee contract that claims your new
| company owns every idea you ever had. Some people will
| claim it's just "lawyer stuff" and is somehow okay. It's
| really not okay.
| manquer wrote:
| Mozilla VPN is a service Mozilla provides though. White-
| labelled Mullvad or not, it a contract between Mozilla and
| the user and therefore presumably covered by this terms of
| use.
|
| I would say porn is probably in the top 3 if not number 1 use
| for VPNs
| wongarsu wrote:
| So only bookmarks of porn sites if you have Sync active,
| sending porn tabs to a Firefox instance on another device,
| browsing porn while on the Mozilla VPN, or using Firefox
| Relay to sign up to a porn website with an anonymous email
| address
|
| Fine by me since I don't use a Mozilla account, but sounds to
| me like I shouldn't get a Mozilla account either
| altairprime wrote:
| Bookmarks and tab URLs don't contain porn, generally?
| References are not typically considered explicit, though
| certainly their language isn't clear enough about that.
|
| If you bookmark a collection of data: / blob: links then
| that would be the outlier scenario where you shouldn't use
| any third-party server-involved bookmark syncing service,
| as presumably they'll all either break or ban you once they
| find you using their bookmark table space for data storage.
|
| Good point about Relay.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Bookmarks and tabs hinge on how you interpret "grant
| access". Do URLs to publicly available websites grant you
| access, or does the phrase only apply to cookies,
| passwords, login-urls, etc.? I'm pretty certain it would
| apply to login-urls, email-confirmation emails, password-
| reset emails, etc, but for normal URLs I could see it
| either way
| caturopath wrote:
| It seems like they might be "use[d]...to...[u]pload,
| download, transmit, display, or grant access to content
| that includes graphic depictions of sexuality"
| Swizec wrote:
| > Bookmarks and tab URLs don't contain porn, generally?
|
| Do URL stubs of porn titles count as explicitly sexual?
| They can get pretty raunchy
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Back in the Wild West of geocities days, I seem to recall
| animated pornographic favicons.
| altairprime wrote:
| Favicons are not contained within bookmarks under normal
| circumstances, but I don't know if Sync syncs those or if
| the browser fetches them on each endpoint.
| altairprime wrote:
| I think this is the most damning point: their terms
| extend to cover the text in URLs, and so by definition
| all text including titles and URLs -- as well as any
| pages visited, due to tab syncing -- would need to be in
| compliance with policy. If it's as clearcut as presented
| here, anyways. Do the other browser profile syncing
| services have similar language? Is such overreach unique
| to Mozilla Corporation?
|
| Though, considering how few people are likely to care
| about the legal exposure risk of continuing to use
| Firefox Sync, I don't imagine this will end up being
| particularly enforceable in practice.
| neuroticnews25 wrote:
| Blob URL is also just a reference to a (local) resource.
| I guess another valid example would be something like
| javascript:document.write(<data>)
|
| Do you know any other?
| rosstex wrote:
| Then you haven't seen my browser
| mmooss wrote:
| > Firefox isn't a Mozilla service.
|
| They might clarify that in the agreement. I doubt many people
| are intimately familiar with Mozilla, Firefox, 'services',
| etc. to distinguish. I am and I didn't think of it in a brief
| reading (which is all I have time for).
| cwillu wrote:
| Then they shouldn't explicitly say "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."
| tofof wrote:
| It's against ToS to watch R rated movies.
| dkga wrote:
| But python-rated movies are ok I guess? :)
| gpm wrote:
| Its against the ToS to watch most PG rated movies. It
| objects to graphic depictions of violence as well, and has
| no exception for brief graphic depictions of sexuality.
| alwa wrote:
| And yet these terms of service--for Firefox--specifically
| apply the AUP to "your use of Firefox," no?
|
| The entire AUP is prefixed "You may not use any of Mozilla's
| services to:". There's nothing in the AUP that _doesn't_
| refer to "Mozilla's services." When the Firefox TOS
| explicitly includes this AUP, how could it make sense unless
| they think of Firefox as one of their services?
|
| At the risk of restating the gp's quote:
|
| > _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._
| caturopath wrote:
| I think Mozilla VPN is a Mozilla service?
|
| It's pretty odd if you aren't allowed to use their VPN to
| watch or share porn
|
| - send unsolicited communications (for example cold emailing
| an employer about a job) - Deceive or mislead (for example
| inviting your brother over for a surprise party under false
| pretenses) - Purchase legal controlled products (for example
| sending the pharmacy a refill for your Xanax) - Collect email
| addresses without permission (for example putting together a
| list of emails to contact public officials)
| ddalex wrote:
| "If you're doing it you have to give us the data, and btw
| you can't do it either"
| Grimblewald wrote:
| look, i'd have similar clauses if I ran such a service.
| Porn gets very messy very quickly. Revenge porn, porn of
| generally unconsenting parties etc. are all to common and
| people who share know it is wrong and so try to use things
| like vpns to hide. The problem for you as a vpn provider is
| proving they're doing the wrong thing with your service, so
| it is much easier to simply say there is a blanket ban and
| then selectivly enforce.
|
| The upside for users in general is such a vpn service tends
| not to be associated with underbelly behaviour and so isn't
| blocked from 90% of the web.
| ragnese wrote:
| Do hammer manufacturers required you to sign an agreement
| at the hardware store with a bunch of legalese so they
| aren't held liable if you use the hammer to beat someone
| to death?
|
| Do alcohol companies get shut down when people drink and
| kill someone with their car?
|
| Did you know that a nonzero percentage of child molesters
| wear Nike sneakers when they kidnap children? Why doesn't
| Nike actively try to prevent this?!
|
| So why should a VPN provider need to explicitly dissuade
| its customers from breaking the law with their service?
| Why should a web browser be afraid of being on the hook
| when someone breaks the law via the web?
| olyjohn wrote:
| Bars certainly get in huge trouble if they let someone
| drink too much, and they leave and drive and kill
| somebody.
| knowitnone wrote:
| but bars are aiding these drunks. a hammer is a tool
| specifically for hitting and removing nails. If you put
| that burden on a hammer, you'll have to put that in a
| pencil and every object in the world.
| eth0up wrote:
| Minor objection...
|
| I have and continue to use my hammer, which is none but
| an Estwing, for demolition work. Often there are no nails
| directly involved and when there are, I use a prybar. I
| have also used it to open beers, 'fix' computers, as well
| as procure therapy to various things that plead for it.
| On several occasions I've even used it tied to a rope to
| throw over an unreachable tree limb.
|
| That this may be used as evidence in court against me,
| well, has me almost welcoming a firing squad. What a
| silly silly planet.
|
| Is there any hope for Midori?
| blendergeek wrote:
| > Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla's Acceptable Use
| Policy
|
| The fact that Firefox isn't a "Mozilla Service" seems
| irrelevant.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Imagine using Mozilla Sync to ensure you have the same horse
| porn on your phone as your laptop out of spite.
| devhe4d wrote:
| with this new TOS, Firefox became Mozilla "service"
| progval wrote:
| The French translation of the Terms of Use says they apply
| both to services and products:
|
| > Vous ne pouvez pas utiliser les services et produits de
| Mozilla dans les buts suivants :
| Mistletoe wrote:
| We are under an attack by Puritanism that is quite astounding
| actually. And no one is doing anything. Everyone just keeps
| bending the knee.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1hqqpbt/newest_ver...
|
| Some of the things that are happening are just from the threat
| of "something bad might come down from the new administration".
| It's so ridiculous.
| Spivak wrote:
| It's gonna be a weird few years that's for sure. I'll leave
| it to the historians to decide when the actual tipping point
| was but the shift in the GOP from being run by Republicans
| with a few bones thrown to Conservatives every now and again
| when it's time to drum up votes to the show now being run by
| Conservatives is going to be the point between two political
| eras.
|
| It's by far not the first time this has happened but it's
| kinda surreal to be alive for one.
| gunian wrote:
| wait till you unlock 1984 esque reality they are beta
| testing on us rn
|
| when you see slavery is still very alive im sure this will
| seem like just a playful moment
| notyourwork wrote:
| I want to entertain you but use a caps lock and some
| punctuation from time to time. It gives your comments
| more credence.
| jmb99 wrote:
| At least in the US, slavery is alive and well. 13th
| amendment abolishes slavery except as punishment for a
| crime, and prisoners all over the country perform forced
| labour for a small fraction of federal minimum wage.
| jltsiren wrote:
| I'd say it was the decline and fall of the Soviet block.
| Without the external pressure to remain competitive, the
| balance shifted from realism towards ideology.
| ragnese wrote:
| The U.S. still has competition from Europe and China, no?
| I'm not convinced that the puritanical fanatics would
| ever make the rational decision to ease up on their
| efforts for the sake of the economy. For non-Western
| examples, see Iran and Afghanistan since the mid 20th
| century.
| tavavex wrote:
| The squeeze on any content that religious people find 'yucky'
| is double-pronged in the US - encouraged both by governments
| and businesses. Paypal, Visa, Mastercard et al are given
| complete discretion over what transactions they can block,
| and they have already extensively used this to deprive legal
| NSFW platforms and creators of their income.
|
| So, on one end, state governments are trying to strongarm
| NSFW services by imposing draconian requirements that ask
| users to submit their private data to some random opaque
| 'benevolent' third party business - and on the other, payment
| processors are using their legal right to refuse whatever
| transaction for any reason so they can starve them of income.
| ikr678 wrote:
| I dont think the pressure from payment processors is
| because of puritanism, but rather payments in this space
| tend to come with a much higher % of fraud and chargebacks
| and they've decided it's not worth the risk.
| sitkack wrote:
| That is half truth that gives them cover.
| duped wrote:
| "risk management" is not puritanism - sex work has a
| different/higher risk profile for PSPs (fraud, chargebacks,
| etc) and it's easier to say "no" than to come up with a new
| product to serve customers.
|
| An enterprising PM at a PSP or fintech could look at the
| size of the sex industry, measure the risk of providing
| payment/banking services to sex workers and businesses and
| offer them at a premium like any other "niche" financial
| area.
|
| And while we're on the topic of "draconian" regulations
| from the government - it's not outside their interest to
| limit the availability of obscene content from children.
| This isn't a "think of the children" argument so much as
| "children consume graphic pornography at huge rates and
| porn providers make money off them as consumers _and
| producers_ with such inept guardrails that age verification
| has been a meme for 25 years. " I don't think validating
| your identity with a government ID (and storing it forever)
| is a good countermeasure but I disagree its some kind of
| draconian limitation on free speech. If porn sites didn't
| buy and sell sex from kids and self regulated, this
| wouldn't be necessary (nb4 "it's the parent's problem" -
| good luck!)
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| That's exactly a "think of the children" argument. CSAM
| moderation was always fairly strict on the big sites --
| they knew it was both an existential threat and the route
| through which puritans such as "duped" here (nice name)
| would try to attack -- but they really tightened up with
| the ban on third party content. Now they have a chain of
| responsibility for every video. So, "duped," if you
| actually have an example of the problem you claim is
| rampant, why aren't you acting on it? Why aren't you
| lighting the fuse on that chain of responsibility? Do you
| _want_ to promote the abuse of children? Or do you admit
| to making it up so that you could use it as a pretext for
| your agenda?
|
| Also: yes, building a government blackmail database is
| draconian.
| duped wrote:
| > CSAM moderation was always fairly strict on the big
| sites
|
| Except on the largest of the sites which was successfully
| sued just a year and a half ago over it's years-long
| policy of looking the other way.
|
| I'm no puritan, I'm just not an absolutist. The real
| world is complicated and I find arguments like yours
| annoying and naive.
| kbelder wrote:
| I don't think it's particularly driven by religion anymore.
| The new puritanism is as much left-wing as right, and often
| atheist.
| mmooss wrote:
| IIRC, terms like that have been in agreements for many years.
| It's boilerplate, almost.
| userbinator wrote:
| I don't think that's the problem here, as I don't want to see
| porn on e.g. Mozilla's forums either. There's a place and
| time for that content and Mozilla shouldn't be the one to
| decide for others. The problem is whether Firefox is a
| Mozilla "service" or not, and the way the terms is linked
| implies that it is.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The Puritans have been trying to ban porn here since the
| concept has existed, it's never stopped, and it's never going
| to stop. They're miserable and they want everyone else to be
| too. That's like most of their religion. Going to church,
| being ashamed of bodies, and judging people.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| I'm all down to write off contract law as "puritanism" but
| the rot is far deeper than an aesthetic (and frankly I'm
| unclear how puritanism applies to this situation at all).
|
| EDIT: I'm not sure why porn is particularly interesting here
| when most internet activity seems to be potentially against
| terms of service.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| My conspiracy theory is that gears are slowly turning to
| revamp the culture, redefine what's acceptable/not acceptable
| and eventually suggest that if you won't have kids you're not
| accepted in the society. Basically a funky way to reverse the
| population decline, as the governments are realizing this
| problem won't be fixed by free markets and etc.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It seems like not so much a conspiracy theory as something
| totally transparent and out in the open. There's a huge
| political push to birth as many babies as possible. Major
| political parties have it as part of their platform. Their
| spokespeople talk derisively of "childless cat ladies" and
| how you're not a real contributor to society unless you
| produce babies.
|
| The "Birth" lobby is a stool composed of several legs:
|
| 1. Attack abortion
|
| 2. Attack contraception
|
| 3. Attack porn
|
| 4. Attack education
|
| 5. Attack "women in the workforce"
|
| All of these things are seen as contributing to declining
| birth rates, so they're opposed by Big Birth. You can see
| the same politicians tend to go after these things in lock
| step.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Pretty much, yeah. Like everything is factually right,
| but I completely disagree with their method. So far,
| they've failed at each step.
|
| There's a very obvious "pro-religion" push going on
| across all social media as well, but it's hard to
| pinpoint when/how it started. Not sure how far they'll
| have to roll back women's rights to get where they want
| to, but it's incredibly sad to watch. Not sure how
| fathers with daughters are going to watch this happen in
| real time as well.
| AndriyKunitsyn wrote:
| I don't think they can succeed though, because the 5. is
| the crucial step, as being a baby-making machine is a
| full-time job, and no lobby is going to get a lot of
| following from the business with the premise to cut the
| available workforce by half.
| jmb99 wrote:
| With the absolutely massive investment in (and push for)
| AI, I assume the belief is that the the reduction of
| workforce will have less of an impact.
| lII1lIlI11ll wrote:
| If the plan is to have most people out of job soon-ish,
| then big population with bunch of young people without
| good prospects is a recipe for disaster.
| Juliate wrote:
| If 1. and 2. are done, 5. falls very easily. It's no
| surprise they started with attacking Roe vs. Wade.
| anonnon wrote:
| People aren't having kids because of stagnant real wages
| and soaring home prices. In the US, the median home price
| is now $450k. In Canada, it's _$650k_. And when people do
| have children, they 're on average having fewer, later in
| life (with a greater risk of complications):
| https://www.northwell.edu/news/the-latest/geriatric-
| pregnanc...
|
| I doubt banning porn or abortion or engaging in cultural
| engineering will fix this.
|
| And then there's this phenomenon, discussion of which was
| once verboten in goodthink circles (like HN) due to its
| anti-feminist and "incel" optics, but has since grown
| enough in strength and scale to shove its way through the
| Overton Window so that even respectable, MSM sources cover
| it: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
| room/3868557-most-yo...
| sitkack wrote:
| The best way to have more kids is to increase the size of
| the middle class, while lowering housing, food and
| childcare costs.
| ahoka wrote:
| I don't think creating the illusion of an imaginary
| middle class ever helped anything. I believe it only
| makes things worse, as now a lot of people think they are
| not working class, just because they have an above median
| wage. Snap it, even some even hold to the illusion that
| they are rich, just because they have a house with a
| mortgage and a private pension.
|
| What you need to have a modern, western country instead
| of a dog-eat-dog wild west is welfare, including
| universal health care.
|
| But welfare is considered as an evil communist plot in
| the US and the people who are led to believe that they
| are somehow above the working masses keep voting against
| their own interests. Not just in the US, unfortunately.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I have no idea why people keep saying it's monetary
| reasons. Why would anyone have 3 kids nowadays? There are
| no real incentives, other than "I want a big family".
| Society actively discourages large families as well. The
| amount of people in their 20s aiming for that is getting
| smaller and smaller too.
|
| The best way to have more kids, unironically, is making
| everyone as poor as possible, removing any other method
| of entertainment, and making "having kids" the only
| choice. That's how it worked for the eternity, and some
| people want a percentage of people to go back to it, so
| it would support the current established system.
| sitkack wrote:
| I didn't say 3. Perhaps I should have said, _any_.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| If everyone has 1/2 kids, the outcome is the same as
| having no kids, just with more years to get there. That's
| Japan's biggest problem right now. People are having
| kids. Tokyo is fairly kid friendly, and
| infrastructure/culture is there. But nobody wants to have
| 3 kids.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Top income brackets aren't really having more than 2
| children either, which is a requirement for growing
| population. Like most studies has shown that, in general,
| educated women, freedom of choice and etc. will
| negatively impact birthrates. It's the same thing
| everywhere. Sure, income, less social pressure and etc.
| affects it somehow, but there's just no real need in
| general to have 3 kids in this day and age. Asking a
| woman to give away at the bare minimum 6 years of their
| youth won't cut it nowadays. And honestly, I don't blame
| them, I think exactly the same way.
| lII1lIlI11ll wrote:
| First of all, US population has been steadily growing, so I
| don't get why big business (whose interests current
| administration represent) would need to engage in long-term
| culture engineering for steady supply of new workers.
|
| Second of all, majority of US population is urban. People
| in NY or Bay Area can't elect a president who represents
| their interests due to how Electoral College is designed
| but attempting to change their opinions on having children
| by banning porn is a pipe dream.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Again, it's just a fun conspiracy theory in my head, and
| no, it doesn't have to be big business. Like you realize
| churches have been pouring money in ads, apps, and etc.
| right? They're actively trying to get back all the lost
| memberships.
|
| US population is growing for a combination of immigration
| and just slightly better birth rates than others. It's
| nowhere close to above-replacement levels (2.1). Just
| check out the population pyramid, and you can see there
| are less younger kids than older ones.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| "The population growth rate is projected to slow from
| 0.6% per year between 2024 and 2034 to 0.2% per year
| between 2045 and 2054."
|
| And almost all growth is immigration, the fertility rate
| hits new lows constantly.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/20
| 24/...
|
| "U.S. Fertility Rate Drops to Another Historic Low"
| lII1lIlI11ll wrote:
| So what?
| dingnuts wrote:
| The culture dies if locals don't have children and the
| immigrants don't assimilate. There are already many
| pockets of micro cultures in the US and that's what the
| people in power are using to divide us already.
|
| I'm increasingly convinced that the goal is to balkanize
| the US and establish a Network State guided by silicon
| valley, as described by Curtis Yarvin
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| It doesn't support economic models in the long run,
| unless you start modifying the definitions of
| "consumption", "growth" and "value created". It also
| doesn't work well unless you create some utopia where
| everything is automated for old people and they can live
| without support from the younger generation.
|
| The problem has not been solved, and all western
| governments are hoping to delay the problem through
| immigration. This buys them time to see what solution
| Japan, SK and China can come up with, and copy that
| instead of taking risks with potentially abysmal results.
| lenkite wrote:
| Confused. What do Firefox's terms of service have to do with
| puritanism ? Have Firefox developers become puritanist or
| something ? That would be extremely surprising if true. Any
| evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) to this ?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| "You may not use any of Mozilla's services to[...]Upload,
| download, transmit, display, or grant access to content
| that includes graphic depictions of sexuality"
| olyjohn wrote:
| When I run Transmission, it also says "don't use this for
| piracy." Of course people are gonna pirate with it. It's
| just to cover their asses.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| "We"? Do _we_ live in the same first world where people fuck
| like animals and promiscuity is the overwhelming norm?
| kevingadd wrote:
| 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.
| shmel wrote:
| Legal trouble for sexuality and violence? I am sorry, in what
| jurisdiction are their servers? Iran or North Korea?
| kevingadd wrote:
| Porn bans get proposed in the US on a regular basis.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Got to love the (oblivious) american moral superiority
| esperent wrote:
| So, as someone else pointed out, saving bookmarks of porn and
| using their bookmarks sync service would be a problem.
|
| It's easy to laugh and dismiss that. But what if you're a
| journalist covering war? You're going to have plenty of
| bookmarks of graphic violence, and therefore run afoul of
| this license.
| bad_user wrote:
| Comments such as yours are missing the point.
|
| Mozilla's ToS applies for Firefox's use, and this is
| literally written by Mozilla themselves:
|
| _"Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla's Acceptable Use
| Policy"_
|
| There's no distinction between the browser and Mozilla's
| online services here.
|
| ---
|
| And even if it were referring only to features such as
| "profile syncing" (and it doesn't refer only to that), does
| this mean that people can't have bookmarks to porn? And why
| would Mozilla care about how people use profile syncing at
| all? I thought it was e2e encrypted.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| How do you square this with the following:
|
| > Mozilla software is made available to you under the terms
| of the Mozilla Public License 2, a free software license,
| which gives you the right to run the program for any
| purpose, to study how it works, to give copies to your
| friends and to modify it to meet your needs better. There
| is no separate End User License Agreement (EULA).
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/eula/
| immibis wrote:
| That's for the court to decide, when you sue Mozilla for
| remotely bricking your browser.
| Delk wrote:
| It should really be up to Mozilla to make the licensing
| of their products and the terms of use of their services
| clear and unambiguous. If users have to figure out how to
| square Mozilla's legal terms with Mozilla's other legal
| terms, they've failed.
| procaryote wrote:
| 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
| knowitnone wrote:
| I agree with you but I'm jumping ship because it is not worth
| it for me to stick with Mozilla.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| TOS has always been a mark of arbitrary service and ownership
| of all products. None of this is new or surprising.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| The applicable laws of North-Korea might differ than the
| applicable laws of Russia which may differ from the law of
| Qatar, etc. It might be even impossible to uphold this world
| wide even if you tried.
|
| So i guess it's more a 'we at Mozilla don't want any trouble'
| thing.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > I recommend switching to an alternative browser which is only
| a browser, like Dillo, Ladybird, or Netsurf.
|
| Did not know any of those alternatives thanks for sharing.
|
| After a quick online search, I see they could work for casual
| browsing and it's great that they don't rely on Chromium
|
| But do you think these can be a full browser replacement
| without extension ecosystems like ublock origin et al.?
| justinclift wrote:
| If you're on macOS, then Kagi's Orion seems good:
|
| https://kagi.com/orion
|
| It's been working fine for me anyway.
| ac29 wrote:
| They are working on Orion for Linux this year as well
| knowitnone wrote:
| interesting they have resources to build a browser. also
| interesting (and sad) they focus on Apple and not Windows.
| Hopefull, they'll port it to Windows and Linux.
| isametry wrote:
| Worth mentioning that Orion is fully based on WebKit.
| Calling it a "Safari wrapper" would be unfair, but it's
| also not extremely far from that either.
| osmsucks wrote:
| Firefox was the last bastion of freedom on the internet and
| the replacements aren't ready.
|
| > But do you think these can be a full browser replacement
| without extension ecosystems like ublock origin et al.?
|
| I'm now actually trying to use qutebrowser as a
| replacement... it's not easy due to the lack of extensions,
| but mitigating factors are:
|
| 1. it has integrated adblock (though no cosmetic filtering)
| 2. there are userscripts to integrate with the Bitwarden CLI
| or a running instance of KeepassXC.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| > Either their legal team made a mistake, in which case they
| should correct it and issue an apology ASAP
|
| I don't think it is a mistake but more the translation of a
| vision and strategy that took hundreds of meetings to be laid
| down very precisely.
|
| I have nothing to back what I am gonna say but I am wondering
| if their strategy might be to truly become the default browser
| of governments who are uncomfortable having Chrome or Edge as
| the default browser. Especially since now they get augmented by
| a lot of AI.
|
| Firefox has it largest market share in Europe and Germany it
| seems and with the concerns with are hearing over there about
| Big tech I wouldn't be surprised at some point some govs try to
| make their workstations Firefox only.
|
| Also some governments are trying hard to restrict access to
| porn, violence and social media for children but we know it is
| almost impossible to do it at the network level. So they might
| try at the browser level with the help of Mozilla and some
| "sanctioned Internet AI safety" inside the browser?
|
| I really don't know but think about it, Mozilla is a dead man
| walking with it's 2% market share and huge cost of maintaining
| one of the most complex piece of software. They have to do
| something about it.
|
| What just tipped me off is reading on Wikipedia [0]:
|
| > On February 8, 2024, Mozilla announced that Baker would be
| stepping down as CEO to "focus on AI and internet safety"[2] as
| chair of the Mozilla Foundation.
|
| - [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is about Mozilla _services_. AFAICT,
| Firefox itself is licensed under the
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Public_License and as
| such doesn't put any restrictions on how you use the software.
| graemep wrote:
| That is what I expected to see, but the title of the page is
| "Firefox Terms of Use"
|
| I think its a good argument for using a Firefox fork.
| 3836293648 wrote:
| That's the Firefox source code though, not necessarily the
| Firefox binary. A Visual Studio Code situation, basically.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I don't think they use a separate EULA for the binaries.
| I've found this:
|
| > Mozilla software is made available to you under the terms
| of the Mozilla Public License 2, a free software license,
| which gives you the right to run the program for any
| purpose, to study how it works, to give copies to your
| friends and to modify it to meet your needs better. There
| is no separate End User License Agreement (EULA).
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/eula/
| Delk wrote:
| A bit of an issue is that the Firefox terms of use page [1]
| says "Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla's Acceptable
| Use Policy", and the Acceptable Use Policy link points to
| their Acceptable Use Policy page regarding Mozilla services
| [2].
|
| So either they're saying your use of Firefox, regardless of
| whether you want to use Mozilla services, must also follow
| the same acceptable use policy that your use of their
| services would, or it's a massively ambiguous way of saying
| your use of Firefox _in combination with actual Mozilla
| services_ must comply with the policy.
|
| If it's the former, their terms of use would be in conflict
| with the commonly understood definition of open source and
| free software licensing. If it's the latter, it's just poor
| legalese that fails to make its intent clear. (Interestingly,
| the Mozilla Public License does not seem to explicitly say
| that there are no restrictions regarding the use of the
| software for any particular purpose, although that is a
| commonly accepted part of the definition of free software and
| open source.)
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250228155328/https://www.mo
| zil...
|
| [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/
| Hizonner wrote:
| Welp, they stopped being open source, then. From the OSD:
|
| 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
|
| The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the
| program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may
| not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from
| being used for genetic research.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| AFAICT there is no restriction on the application itself:
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/eula/
| gpm wrote:
| The terms are very clear that they apply to Firefox the
| application itself (but not the source code if you compile
| it from scratch)
|
| > Mozilla grants you a personal, non-exclusive license to
| install and use the "Executable Code" version of the
| Firefox web browser, which is the ready-to-run version of
| Firefox from an authorized source that you can open and use
| right away.
|
| > These Terms only apply to the Executable Code version of
| Firefox
|
| But not the source code if you compile it from scratch
|
| > [Continuing previous quote], not the Firefox source code.
|
| However the source code excludes DRM components, and while
| the terms don't mention it I believe also some API keys
|
| > In order to play certain types of video, Firefox may
| download content decryption modules from third parties
| which may not be open source.
|
| (It's not clear to me that these terms are currently in
| effect. Certainly I haven't been asked to agree to them
| yet).
| mattl wrote:
| They've had a different license on the binaries vs. the
| source code for a long time.
| wyclif wrote:
| Dillo is only sporadically developed. They even lost control of
| the dillo.org domain a long time ago, which pretty much spells
| amateur hour.
|
| Ladybird would be a better choice, but it's not even fully
| baked yet. Coming sometime in 2026, supposedly.
|
| I'd recommend the Brave browser for people concerned about
| recent bad news from Mozilla.
| haswell wrote:
| There are also Firefox forks such as WaterFox, LibreWolf and
| Floorp.
|
| These seem like a more direct migration path for someone
| wanting to move off of Firefox.
| knowitnone wrote:
| I'm using LibreWolf for a few days. Only annoyance I've
| found is zooming in on a site(HN) does not stick. I'm
| pretty sure I don't have to zoom all the time on Firefox or
| Chrome.
| burnte wrote:
| Mozilla's management and legal has always been amazing when it
| comes to unforced errors. These changes are actually pretty
| normal, but they're also worded more scarily by being more
| encompassing than they need to be. Mozilla has always sucked
| when it comes to communicating with the outside world.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| They know how to send cake at least
| mhh__ wrote:
| A shooting match between AMD and Mozilla would be a good day
| to be a cobbler
| thot_experiment wrote:
| actually the funniest HN comment i've read in years, bravo
| neilv wrote:
| My dream team of execs would send lawyers back to the drawing
| table on at least one of these clauses.
|
| "Imagine that someday we get taken over by bad people. Write this
| as if our today selves want to protect everyone against our
| future selves."
| anvuong wrote:
| Firefox performance has been trash for years, for many reasons. I
| still stick with it because it was included in my Ubuntu 8.04,
| which was the first OS I installed by myself, and more recently
| because of its stand regarding privacy. Now I might as well bite
| the bullet and move to Chrome or Edge, performance is much much
| better.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| There's Chromium
| anonym29 wrote:
| There's chromium, and then, for those who take their privacy
| more seriously than the average VPN customer that just wants
| to do piracy, there's ungoogled-chromium.
|
| It's _like_ chromium, just without feeding heaps of your
| personally-identifying metadata directly to Google, who give
| it directly to the NSA, who give it directly to Elon Musk and
| DOGE.
|
| Remember, ALL mass surveillance by ALL intelligence agencies
| is ALWAYS a threat to your freedom, because you don't get to
| revoke it. You weren't consenting to sharing your information
| with the Obama administration, you were consenting to sharing
| your information with all future administrations, no matter
| how far removed from your own worldview those future
| administrations may be.
|
| There is one solution. We the people demand an end to ALL
| government surveillance as well as severe legal consequences
| for all US government employees who ever helped build such
| systems, even if they were "just following orders", because
| neither following orders nor ignorance of the larger picture
| is an excuse for facilitating moral atrocities.
| huang_chung wrote:
| > metadata directly to Google, who give it directly to the
| NSA, who give it directly to Elon Musk and DOGE
|
| Source?
| anonym29 wrote:
| sources:
|
| - Google's own privacy policy
|
| - Extensive evidence provided by brave national heroes
| and civil rights legends like Edward Snowden and Chelsea
| Manning, including training materials for specific named
| NSA programs like PRISM that offer explicit lists of
| cooperating partners, including Google, Microsoft, Apple
| - basically every big tech company, but also smaller but
| popular ones, such as Skype (pre-Microsoft acquisition);
| this is well known among technology's civil rights
| advocates, and isn't hard to find discussion of by
| credible technologists, including the folks behind
| Protonmail1
|
| - Elon & DOGE: see literally every major American news
| network besides Fox pretty much since the inauguration,
| large swathes of the internet, several prominent
| discussions on HN. It's not just illegally mass-
| surveilled stuff either, they're going through all sorts
| of classified stuff right now!
|
| 1 Here's one such example literally on the front page as
| of the time of writing this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43201732
| mzajc wrote:
| A few years ago Google came under fire for sending extra
| identifiers to Google's websites in a header named
| X-Client-Data[0]. I don't remember how many identifying
| bits that includes or whether they still do it, but it
| was the tipping point for me.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106
| jesterson wrote:
| How do you define performance? For my use case I don't see any
| difference in speed compared to say, Safari.
| clvx wrote:
| Well that clearly sucks. Does anyone know alternatives for
| firefox sync?
| chmod775 wrote:
| 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
| to do with your use of Firefox. Meaning that if you hit some
| button, Mozilla now has a license to process the data they need
| to make that button work _and nothing more_. That means unless
| you give them additional permission somewhere, they can 't, for
| example, also store and process that information to train some AI
| model or whatever. All they're allowed to use it for is making
| whatever you interacted with work. Seems pretty reasonable.
|
| > to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online
| content
|
| This further narrows the scope to websites and such you interact
| with (online content). It also says that license only covers
| "helping" _you_ with these things. The part we looked at
| previously narrows this to your intent.
|
| > you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide
| license
|
| So just a license. No transfer of ownership is happening.
|
| > When you upload or input information through Firefox
|
| Note that this says "through". They're clearly only trying to
| cover their butt as an intermediary by obtaining a license to
| process your information to act as such an intermediary.
| _Explicitly nothing more_.
|
| Putting it back together we get:
|
| > 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_.
|
| Important part in cursive.
|
| So broadly what is the license for?
|
| > license [..] to help you [..] as you indicate
| lopatin wrote:
| I still don't get it. Is Mozilla phoning home the fact that I
| pressed the button?
| chmod775 wrote:
| Short answer: No.
|
| Long answer: Unless the button says "phone home my
| information to Mozilla", this license wouldn't cover that.
| This license only covers whatever is necessary to make the
| button itself work - whatever is necessary to realize the
| user's intent.
| inetknght wrote:
| They didn't need a license to your data before. Why should
| they need it now?
| ykonstant wrote:
| Let me guess: chmod775 will not reply to this comment.
| procaryote wrote:
| It's an apt username for naively giving read access
| chmod775 wrote:
| See my reply to you here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43205587
|
| Honestly I'm surprised that a research technician is more
| interested in this style of "argument" rather than
| figuring out the meaning of a (very precisely worded)
| sentence to for its own sake.
| handoflixue wrote:
| From the link that was already provided, and which is
| repeated in their Privacy FAQ: "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."
|
| That seems like a pretty reasonable justification to me
| inetknght wrote:
| Nope. It seems like legalspeak to say "we sell your data"
| while making it sound like they don't.
| wongarsu wrote:
| That'd be a matter for the privacy policy. The section in
| question is whether they can then go ahead and publish a list
| of all the buttons you pressed. Which according to this
| license grant they can, but only if it "helps you navigate,
| experience, [or] interact with online content as you indicate
| with your use of Firefox". What does that mean? I have no
| clue. It's a really strange restriction and I can't decide if
| that's wide open or so narrow that it is basically never met
| simpaticoder wrote:
| _> Let's dissect what it actually says_
|
| I don't believe that dissection is a good way to understand the
| implications of this clause.
|
| _> 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._
|
| Rather than go over this word-by-word, please tell me: what
| limits exactly does this place on Mozilla? What rights does it
| give to the user? One way to express such a limit is by
| construction, that is, construct hypothetical acts A, B, and C
| that would be allowed under these terms, but actions D, E, and
| F would not be allowed (and be a cause for action by a user). I
| assert that the first set includes literally anything you can
| imagine (modulo a sophists ability to morph "help you" into
| anything they want), and the second set is empty.
|
| To steel-man this concept, let us say that Mozilla wants to
| store and use your password to your bank to check your balance
| regularly. I assert that this action is allowed by there terms.
| Why? First, you used Firefox and therefore enabled the clause.
| Second, your authentication details are entered through
| Firefox, and this constitutes "input" or "upload", to which
| they assert ownership (which I will use as shorthand for a
| "nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license"). One thing
| they could do with your financial data is show it to you (least
| harm). Another thing is to aggregate it with other's data
| (medium harm). Yet another application would be to pool it into
| a database to be sold to the highest bidder (maximum harm). In
| the latter case, you could make the argument that such a move
| "helps you" by giving Mozilla a reliable revenue stream that
| helps fund continued development of the browser.
|
| Needless to say, I am appalled and feel bad for all the many
| people I've told about Firefox over the years, described it as
| a bastion of fairness and privacy in an all too often sinister
| world. And now that they've assert these extraordinary rights
| over user data, I feel ashamed of my advocacy. I daresay that
| even if they rescind this incredible overreach, I will not come
| back. My trust has been broken and cannot be easily (if ever)
| repaired.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > First, you used Firefox and therefore enabled the clause.
|
| I believe your confusion stems from a misreading of "as you
| indicate with your use of Firefox". You're reading it like
| "by using Firefox, you indicate".
|
| Contemplate the difference between
|
| "The car is allowed to move as you indicate with the
| controls."
|
| versus
|
| "By using the controls, you indicate the car is allowed to
| move."
|
| The former explicitly only allows the car to realize your
| intent, whereas the latter gives the car license to do
| whatever it pleases.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| You have now edited your comment at least 3 times. I find
| it hard to take this argument seriously, and indeed
| struggle to understand how it isn't trolling. At best this
| language is ambiguous; at worst it is misleading. It
| certainly ignores the core point of my comment, which is to
| construct hypothetical actions by Mozilla that would NOT be
| permitted by the clause. I strongly feel that your purpose
| in defending Mozilla here would be better served by
| providing those examples.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > You have now edited your comment at least 3 times.
|
| Yes. I reworked the example a few times. I think the
| third rewrite made it pretty clear.
|
| > It certainly ignores the core point of my comment,
| which is to construct hypothetical actions by Mozilla
| that would NOT be permitted by the clause.
|
| The hypothetical action you gave is not permitted,
| because the user would not have indicated they wanted
| Mozilla to do that. Firefox/Mozilla is only allowed to
| use your data _as indicated_ by you.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Mozilla should consider rewriting their statement for
| clarity, unless of course the ambiguity is the point.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| The statement is clear and simple and would not benefit
| from a TOS rewrite. What you really want are clearer
| processing directions built into the Firefox UI, not a
| longer or different TOS.
|
| Something like, a popup over the execute button on the
| search bar disclosing the specific processing instruction
| you are providing by pressing that button, and by whom.
|
| Or, when you use a vertical scroll bar, a confirmation
| that no processing is occurring outside your local
| machine.
|
| These things would satisfy some more detail-minded
| people, but ultimately would provide no significant value
| to either Mozilla or the marginal user, so it's really no
| mystery why Firefox does not do this.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I guess. But what they really need is trust, which was
| their selling point for a decade. But that takes a long
| time to build up and no UX changes can bring back.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| The phrase is "...as you indicate with your use of
| Firefox"! It is NOT "...as you indicate with your Firefox
| user preferences." Using Firefox is what indicates your
| agreement, similar to how using your credit card
| indicates your agreement with the card terms. I take it
| back - the meaning is not ambiguous at all.
| chmod775 wrote:
| I'm at a loss as to how to proceed from here, given that
| we seem to have different ideas of how the English
| language works.
|
| However there's more that also precludes such use as in
| your example:
|
| > license to use that information _to help you navigate,
| experience, and interact_
|
| Mozilla phoning home your bank account details is not
| helping you do that in any way, so it is not covered. The
| next part, that we seem to disagree on, only further
| narrows that down to actual user intent.
|
| You're not indicating that they can have a license to do
| anything, you're specifically giving them a "license [..]
| to help you [..] as you indicate".
| janalsncm wrote:
| Ok, so you read it to say that at some later point they
| will ask, and that point the language will matter.
|
| What was the purpose of mentioning it now? And why write in
| such an ambiguous way that it could be interpreted
| otherwise? And that still doesn't give me confidence about
| what they will do at a later time. I don't like it at all,
| these are used car dealership tactics.
| foxglacier wrote:
| I think that's just a cover-all and they also have a privacy
| policy [1] which is explicit about how they use it and how
| they don't, for example:
|
| "the data stays on your device and is not sent to Mozilla's
| servers unless it says otherwise in this Notice."
|
| ... "When you perform a search in Firefox, your search query,
| device data and location data will be processed by your
| default search engine"
|
| ... "Mozilla derives the high level category [...] from
| keywords in that query [...] privacy preserving technologies
| such that Mozilla only learns that someone, somewhere,
| performed a search relating to a particular category, without
| knowing who."
|
| ... Review Checked, AI Chatbots, advertising on new tab page,
| etc.
|
| So yea Firefox does so much they pretty much have to use your
| data, but it's not a blank cheque to do what they want.
|
| [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/
|
| Not so say I like some of those things - advertising and
| categorizing searches. But still, it's finite and explicit.
| distortedsignal wrote:
| > what limits exactly does this place on Mozilla?
|
| Mozilla is bound to only use the content to help the use
| navigate, experience and interact with online content as the
| user has indicated.
|
| > One thing they could do with your financial data is show it
| to you (least harm).
|
| Yes - this is what the user indicated.
|
| > Another thing is to aggregate it with other's data (medium
| harm).
|
| And the user has not indicated that this would be a permitted
| use of the data - thereby revoking the license of the first
| clause. If the data is used outside of the final clause of
| the license, that is unlicensed use of data. This would be a
| material breach of the contract by the corporation. This
| could open them up to massive legal penalties.
| zihotki wrote:
| What is the definition of "help"? Is it showing ads to help
| you discover the products or services?
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| > 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.
|
| So basically they can track everything I upload or type on my
| keyboard while in Firefox?
| chmod775 wrote:
| No, they cannot.
|
| You're replying to a comment where I've broken the sentence
| down into smaller parts. It's the best I can do.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| How is "to help you navigate, experience, and interact with
| online content" different from "to do anything we want with
| it"?
| chmod775 wrote:
| The last part of the sentence narrows it down, as does
| the first part.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| It doesn't narrow anything down unless they say
| specifically what they do.
| chmod775 wrote:
| They only have license to use the data in order to
| realize the intent of the user, how much more specific
| than that can it get?
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| And the means of realization are up to Mozilla. In other
| words they can do whatever they want. If my intent is to
| type something into the searchbar and get redirected to
| the search engine website, there is no reason why Mozilla
| would need to know about this.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > there is no reason why Mozilla would need to know about
| this.
|
| Precisely. That's why it's not covered by the license.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| > That's why it's not covered by the license.
|
| It says it is.
| chmod775 wrote:
| No. It doesn't say that.
|
| If you want to claim otherwise, show where it says that
| and elaborate. This style of "argument" leads nowhere.
| You're stringing together vague statements and claims,
| leaving it to the imagination of the reader to tie them
| into the matter at hand. Maybe you want to do your own
| dissection of the sentence we are arguing about to make
| your reading of it clear.
| qiqitori wrote:
| I think you're interpreting "as you indicate with your
| use of Firefox." in some weird charitable way. Law
| doesn't work like that.
| chmod775 wrote:
| No, I'm not. I'm interpreting it precisely as written
| using the rules of the English language. Lawyers get paid
| good money to word them _very_ precisely.
| sirz_benjie wrote:
| I appreciate your candor and good-faith, benefit-of-the-
| doubt reading of this clause.
|
| However,
|
| > Lawyers get paid good money to word them very
| precisely.
|
| This is true, but not in the way you are presenting. The
| precision is often to provide unilateral freedom under
| the guise of protection. They will "lawyer" you. "As
| indicated by you" is a grossly broad phrase. An
| indication is not an express, enthusiastic consent. (FWIW
| browsers have a lot of lessons to learn from sexual
| misconduct training, but I digress).
|
| Importantly, you are making an implicit assumption that
| actually is not protected by the statement. And that is
| _when_ the intention was shared. If you accept the terms
| of a Mozilla service elsewhere that indicate you are
| amenable to, for instance, being served ads in exchange
| for using the browser a certain way --it can now be
| argued that the data can be exfiltrated.
|
| So, there are two points of failure with your assessment.
|
| 1. "Indicated by you" is subjective and Mozilla can
| solidly argue implicit consent or action 2. The
| indication need not be contained to the same operation
| which which the information in question is being sent.
| chmod775 wrote:
| I had to vouch for your comment, which given that yours
| is the first and only comment responding with something
| substantive in this entire comment tree is rather...
| interesting. Thank you for actually engaging in the
| discussion about the matter at hand using well laid out
| arguments.
|
| > "As indicated by you" is a grossly broad phrase. An
| indication is not an express, enthusiastic consent.
|
| I agree that by itself "indicate" could be interpreted
| very broadly, however in context it is decidedly less so:
| " _to help you navigate, experience, and interact with
| online content_ as you indicate _with your use of
| Firefox_ ". So in order to be licensed use, it has to
| serve to help the user "navigate, experience, and
| interact" in the way the user indicated.
|
| Also see the steering wheel example here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200940
|
| > If you accept the terms of a Mozilla service elsewhere
| that indicate you are amenable to, for instance, being
| served ads in exchange for using the browser a certain
| way --it can now be argued that the data can be
| exfiltrated.
|
| You're right. It absolutely could be argued. As long as
| they obtain consent/a communication of intent somewhere -
| for instance by you leaving a "yes, serve me ads"
| checkbox ticked somewhere - they arguably could now have
| license to use your data for that.
|
| However the point is that something _on top_ of your
| agreement to the TOS is necessary to make that happen.
| Just agreeing to the TOS and browsing the web normally
| doesn 't give Mozilla license to do much at all.
|
| If I could make a change to the sentence, I would modify
| it to include "license [..] to the extent necessary to
| [..]":
|
| > When you upload or input information through Firefox,
| you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free,
| worldwide license to use that information _to the extent
| necessary_ to help you navigate, experience, and interact
| with online content as you indicate with your use of
| Firefox.
|
| I don't think that change is strictly... necessary, but
| it makes it very clear that Mozilla doesn't have license
| to do all sorts of other unrelated things with your data
| beyond what is absolutely _necessary_ to realize the user
| 's intent.
| jmholla wrote:
| > This is true, but not in the way you are presenting.
| The precision is often to provide unilateral freedom
| under the guise of protection. They will "lawyer" you.
| "As indicated by you" is a grossly broad phrase. An
| indication is not an express, enthusiastic consent. (FWIW
| browsers have a lot of lessons to learn from sexual
| misconduct training, but I digress).
|
| I'd like to second this. I've attempted to have lawyers
| write contracts that adequately protect and limit both
| sides of an agreement. First drafts always look to
| completely balance the scales in favor of the person
| paying them.
|
| Writing a well-balanced contract requires a lot of work
| that Mozilla should be doing, but charitably doesn't know
| they need to do or pessimistically is intentionally not
| doing. It's hard to read this situation as not either
| incompetence or a change in Mozilla's priorities.
| ykonstant wrote:
| You have been nitpicking on minutiae while blatantly
| ignoring the broader context. What is your stance on
| Mozilla removing the "we don't sell your data" clause as
| indicated in other comments? You have been latching on
| wordings and dragging people in clarification contests,
| but have been carefully avoiding to respond to this not
| at all vague statement/fact.
|
| Here, let me repeat some of the comments you ignored:
|
| ndiddy 4 hours ago | unvote | parent | prev | next [-]
|
| Given that Mozilla updated their site a couple days ago
| to remove any wording along the lines of "Firefox will
| never sell your data to advertisers" when a flag
| associated with the new Firefox terms of use is enabled
| (see https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab8
| 46d8144b...), I'm not so sure that this is a CYA about
| standard web browser usage.
|
| theturtletalks 4 hours ago | unvote | root | parent |
| next [-]
|
| > {% 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 %}
|
| The proof is in the code, great work.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > You have been nitpicking on minutiae while blatantly
| ignoring the broader context. What is your stance on
| Mozilla removing the "we don't sell your data" clause as
| indicated in other comments?
|
| Why do you care about my stance?
|
| I'm just here trying to correct a misreading of a
| specific instance of "lawyerspeak" and am not interested
| in joining some ideological battle where you believe me
| on the opposing side. It's not my kind of past time. I'm
| more interested in making sure I fully understand a
| matter, often by bouncing my interpretations off other
| people. I could not care less about joining some online
| brawl and making my side seem right by any means
| necessary.
|
| What you're bringing up has no bearing on this
| conversation - it doesn't change the meaning of the
| sentence people were confused about at all.
|
| _That 's_ why I was ignoring these kinds of replies. I
| just don't care for it.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > I'm more interested in making sure I fully understand a
| matter, often by bouncing my interpretations off other
| people.
|
| Are you a lawyer?
|
| You've been doing more than "bouncing my interpretations
| of other people". You've been confidently telling people
| that your interpretation is correct and that concerns
| about this granting Firefox legal cover to do much more
| with user data are baseless.
|
| > navigate, experience, and interact
|
| You claims these words are restrictive, but they really
| aren't.
|
| Did you write an reddit post about air condidtioners?
| Does that indicate an interest in buying an air
| conditioner? Can mozilla now sell/share that data with
| advertisers so you can experience ads related to air-
| conditioners?
|
| Those three words provide a huge amount of wiggle room.
|
| If you truly want to "fully understand a matter", it
| hells to look at the entire context.
| inetknght wrote:
| They didn't need a license before. Why should they need
| one now?
| genewitch wrote:
| Law degress are expensive
| chmod775 wrote:
| Do they need to secure a license in such a way? Probably
| not.
|
| Would that fact at all change what the sentence in their
| TOS means? Nope.
|
| Whether or not the sentence needs to be there has no
| bearing on its meaning.
| inetknght wrote:
| That's a wonderful non-answer. It's really showing how
| much leeway you're giving Mozilla for this overreach.
|
| What changed? _Why do they need it now?!_
| chmod775 wrote:
| I'm not here to defend _or_ attack Mozilla.
|
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43205587
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| "The intend of the user is to experience the best
| browsing experience hence we upload and sell all data for
| training to improve that experience"
|
| This is why broad "boilerplate" agreements are
| unacceptable especially from a self proclaimed savior of
| online privacy such as Mozilla.
| jcranmer wrote:
| My guess is the first phrase is lawyer-brain for "we send
| the words you typed in the search bar to the search
| engine for you."
|
| (Yes, they need your express permission to do that,
| because copyright law is really fucking dumb and makes
| absolutely no sense if you're approaching it from
| engineer-brain.)
| janalsncm wrote:
| > navigate, experience, and interact with online content
|
| I can do all of those things just fine without Mozilla
| also experiencing my online content.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| My browser sent a request that starts with "POST" in
| order to tell this website to create this comment but it
| includes the words that I wrote and therefore "own" as
| far as copyright is concerned. Mozilla requests a license
| to send such data to websites in similar contexts as, in
| this case, I "indicate" by clicking the "reply" button.
|
| Other uses of that data are not licensed. For example,
| using that data in an unrelated request they send to
| themselves, not indicated by clicking reply, is not
| licensed.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| This is nonsense. Does curl need a license to send HTTP
| requests for me?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Does curl need a license to send HTTP requests for me?
|
| No, but if they had one and it was phrased like this one,
| the license itself would be limited to these activities.
| If you want something to decry from Mozilla's terms, pay
| attention to this part:
|
| > Every once in a while, Mozilla may decide to update
| these Terms. We will post the updated Terms online. We
| will take your continued use of Firefox as acceptance of
| such changes. We will post an effective date at the top
| of this page to make it clear when we made our most
| recent update.
|
| Note that they even tell you that you can check for
| yourself to see if/when they tell you that you've agreed
| to give them a new license. That is much closer to
| allowing them to do anything they want than what the
| current license allows.
|
| Regardless of any of that, the thing to have in mind is
| that this is an explicit message from Mozilla that you
| are agreeing to these terms _by using firefox_ and
| continuing to agree to the terms _by using firefox_. Not
| to say this is ideal; just that it 's as good a time as
| any to move on from Mozilla and firefox, especially if
| one is unhappy with these terms. I say this as someone
| who has left behind Mozilla and firefox after using it
| for over a decade. I will continue to be on the look out
| for and supportive of alternatives. So far librewolf
| (https://librewolf.net/) has been an easy pick-up as it's
| primarily just firefox with telemetry turned off.
| plaguuuuuu wrote:
| Mozilla isn't sending that data. You're sending that
| data.
|
| These terms are common on webapps because, well, they're
| webapps. You send your data to the webapp and they store
| it on their own servers.
|
| Web apps, operated by individuals or organisations, are
| very different to local apps which are operated by _you_.
| Just because the Firefox app is running on your device
| doesn 't mean that Mozilla is operating it.
|
| By granting Mozilla the right to access and use your
| data, you're agreeing to give them data which they _never
| had previously_ - instead of just sending the POST to
| xyz.com you 're now sending it to Mozilla as well who can
| do whatever they like with it, sell it to ad networks,
| whatever.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| Yes they can and will, they are a add company now, the money
| from google will stop flowing so they do everything to make
| money with your data.
| mmooss wrote:
| Do you have expertise, for example as an IP attorney? I don't
| meant to disqualify what you say; at the same time people would
| benefit from knowing what your analysis comes from.
|
| I am not an expert in this field, and I think the meaning is
| ambiguous. It could be interpreted as you say; it could be
| interpreted otherwise.
|
| Mozilla's current intent isn't relevant to what they do later
| or its legality or enforceablility.
| nerdile wrote:
| I don't have to grant Word a license to what I type in it. This
| is a highly unusual clause that other software doesn't have.
|
| When software has to "phone home" to deliver the functionality
| you requested, then two things happen: One, a number of privacy
| regulations kick in, and they need to get you to agree to send
| your data to them. Two, they now get to move your data out of
| your control. I mean, you trust them today, so here's hoping
| they don't ever get hacked or hire someone untrustworthy?
|
| It's sad when even to use the basic features of a web browser,
| you need to agree to send them your data. It's not
| fundamentally necessary to send your data to Mozilla or their
| partners in order to load and render a website. It's a dark
| pattern to obtain consent to collect your data "when it's
| necessary", and then rewrite your app _to make it necessary_.
| wongarsu wrote:
| A license grant like this is common in the context of review
| systems or forums or the like. For example if I go to
| addons.mozilla.org and post a review for an addon, Mozilla
| arguably needs a license grant like this to allow them to
| publish the review. And preferably they would want to word it
| in a way that then allows them to use the same review in
| print or a super bowl spot.
|
| The weird thing is that a) I don't think this license grant
| covers any of that, since publishing a review doesn't improve
| my experience, it improves other's experiences, and b)
| Mozilla Websites like addons.mozilla.org have a completely
| different TOS [1], with a completely different license grant.
|
| I have no idea what this license grant is supposed to
| accomplish, or what it would even allow that requires a
| license grant in the first place
|
| 1: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/mozilla/
| wongarsu wrote:
| Thinking about this a bit more: the most likely use for
| this specific license grant I can come up with is a 3rd
| party partnership similar to pre-acquisition Pocket.
|
| Imagine if on first startup Firefox offers you to show
| website recommendations. Maybe a prechecked checkbox. If
| you don't say no, they send anything you type in the
| address bar to some third party, that third party throws
| that in a recommendation system and spits out websites you
| may want to visit, which Firefox then shows in the new-tab
| page. This license grant would cover that. They would be
| using a license on content I input (all my keystrokes in
| the address bar) to help me experience online content
| (recommendations for new content) as I indicate (they
| asked). In principle recommending me websites based on all
| images I upload with Firefox would also be covered, though
| that's a bit far fetched.
|
| Of course in the EU you'd probably have pretty strict
| consent requirements because of the GDPR, same with other
| jurisdictions with strong privacy protections. But in
| places with weak privacy protections the grant in question
| should cover all bases to pull something like this
| chmod775 wrote:
| > I don't have to grant Word a license to what I type in it.
|
| Yes you do.
|
| From Microsoft's Services Agreement [1]:
|
| > To the extent necessary to provide the Services to you and
| others, to protect you and the Services, and to improve
| Microsoft products and services, you grant to Microsoft a
| worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to
| use Your Content, for example, to make copies of, retain,
| transmit, reformat, display, and distribute via communication
| tools Your Content on the Services.
|
| That's broader than what Mozilla is asking for.
|
| [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en/servicesagreement
| wongarsu wrote:
| Which for the record they absolutely need, for example if
| you write something in word, click the share button, copy
| the link and publish it in this forum. Microsoft is now
| publishing whatever you wrote in the document, and their
| lawyers want to make sure they are allowed to do that.
|
| Word versions that predate the share button probably
| wouldn't need the license grant. But since MS likes to
| limit the number of different licenses it was probably
| still in there to cover SharePoint and OneDrive
| nerdile wrote:
| The software license terms for Word and all the other
| desktop apps does not include such a clause, no.
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/useterms
|
| The Microsoft Services Agreement applies to your use of
| their online services, like OneDrive and SharePoint, as
| you say, and there's an explicit consent in the app and a
| giant off switch there. They employ dark patterns to push
| you strongly to use their online services, but it's still
| optional.
|
| It should be readily obvious that choosing to use online
| sharing or storage features or submit reviews require the
| data you enter to be sent, shared, or stored thusly...
| chmod775 wrote:
| In that case I stand corrected. Apparently you _could_
| use Word without accepting an agreement potentially
| granting Microsoft a license to what you write.
| rixed wrote:
| No offense, I'm aware of how complex laws can be, but...
| Shouldn't that be obvious? Or do you think you also grant
| a license to any pen manufacturer to help you write
| whatever it is that you are writing?
| halJordan wrote:
| Word isnt a desktop app anymore. Its a service that is
| also made available via a desktop app. You cant just
| ignore 365 like that
| like_any_other wrote:
| > Which for the record they absolutely need
|
| "Hey, here are my car keys - can you move my car to a
| different parking space?"
|
| "I cannot - I do not have a royalty-free non-exclusive
| worldwide perpetual license to access and operate your
| vehicle."
|
| I realize lawyers have been wildly successful in making a
| parody of our societies and legal systems, but permission
| is implied in clicking the "share" button, it does not
| require obtuse and overreaching legal language to grant.
| aeturnum wrote:
| So to take your example:
|
| So based on this request: "Hey, here are my car keys -
| can you move my car to a different parking space?" The
| parking attendant's gonna drive it like they do in Ferris
| Bueller's Day Off[1]. Oh - you didn't want that? Well you
| should have been more specific.
|
| If you are comfortable leaving things ambiguous, that's
| fine. That's how you get situations where Twitter and
| Meta are using all of their user content as input for
| LLMs. Obviously you can stop using those products if you
| want, but when you get angry about (or mock) companies
| that are making it illegal for them to do the same thing
| you are part of the problem.
|
| I don't "like" legal jargon, but I understand that the
| legal system is one way we can limit the power of
| corporations, and throwing up your hands and claiming we
| don't need it feels immature to me. We live in hell but
| that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve hell. We
| certainly shouldn't lie & distort what rights Mozilla has
| under this agreement as the title of this submission
| does.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0_rKOlzVuY
| like_any_other wrote:
| > Oh - you didn't want that? Well you should have been
| more specific.
|
| But that license agreement does the opposite - it gives
| Microsoft more _general_ permissions. You tell them to
| host & share your content by clicking "share", but then
| they also give themselves all sorts of other permissions.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I don't know that I agree I guess? I think when they say
| they have the right to "make copies of, retain, transmit,
| reformat, display, and distribute via communication tools
| Your Content on the Services" - that basically describes
| sharing your content? They copy your content, they
| transmit it to their service, they retain the copy, they
| reformat it for another context, they display &
| distribute it - all on "the Services."
|
| Like what in there is "more" than you need to share an
| item? I certainly see how they could add more text
| restricting the nature of the license to be in line with
| user intent - but that feels like it goes against that
| it's "implied." Which is it? Is it obvious what rights
| Microsoft needs to share content or should they go into
| more excruciating legal detail?
| like_any_other wrote:
| (I do agree with you that the post title distorts the
| Mozilla license, for the record)
|
| > I think when they say they have the right to "make
| copies of, retain.." - that basically describes sharing
| your content?
|
| It does. But that is not the rights they granted
| themselves - they start that list with "for example". The
| actual rights they grant themselves are:
|
| > To the extent necessary to provide the Services to you
| and others, to protect you and the Services, _and to
| improve Microsoft products and services_
|
| That is _all_ MS products and services. In other words,
| they grant themselves exactly the right to train AI on
| your content, that you had used as an example of the
| consequences of vagueness.
|
| To move beyond this specific license - when an entity
| wants to do with your input only what you implicitly tell
| it to do (send a search query to Google, host & share a
| document, etc.), they already have all the permissions
| via implication. It is when they want to do _more_ , that
| they need a license.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Oh! I am the asshole here. I was relying on the quote in
| the thread but you are right that the full license is far
| too broad!
|
| > _when an entity wants to do with your input only what
| you implicitly tell it to do (send a search query to
| Google, host & share a document, etc.), they already have
| all the permissions via implication._
|
| I guess I don't think this is true. If they have a nice
| broad license that covers what you ask of them that broad
| license might also allow "improving their services" (you
| would have to read it). The alternative is what Mozilla
| does here - putting limits on their use. Legal frameworks
| aren't...physics? They only matter if you go to court -
| but once you get to court the thing that matters is the
| text of the legal agreement. I guess...if you wanted to
| sue Google over what they did with your search query, the
| lawsuit would hinge on what their ToS said and it either
| says they can do what they did or it doesn't?
| like_any_other wrote:
| > Oh! I am the asshole here. I was relying on the quote
| in the thread but you are right that the full license is
| far too broad!
|
| Don't feel bad - it was the purpose of those examples to
| deceive.
| Aeolun wrote:
| My Word 95 never asked for this though? Clearly it's not
| necessary to provide me a word processor.
|
| My CS4, as far as I recall, has never asked for it either.
|
| It seems a fairly recent thing that companies want to
| harvest your personal information.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I went looking for old Microsoft Word EULAs but didn't
| find any on google. I did find this fun tidbit, though:
|
| > Performance or Benchmark Testing. You may not disclose
| the results of any benchmark test of either of the
| Windows 95 Software Components to any third party without
| Microsoft's prior written approval.
|
| Wasn't that an Oracle sin? I guess Microsoft didn't want
| to miss out on the dickery.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Given that Mozilla updated their site a couple days ago to
| remove any wording along the lines of "Firefox will never sell
| your data to advertisers" when a flag associated with the new
| Firefox terms of use is enabled (see https://github.com/mozilla
| /bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...), I'm not so sure that
| this is a CYA about standard web browser usage.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| > {% 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 %}
|
| The proof is in the code, great work.
| neilv wrote:
| Are lawyers OK with a client doing things like this? Or is
| this a client you fire?
| handoflixue wrote:
| > remove any wording along the lines of "Firefox will never
| sell your data to advertisers"
|
| You mean wording like this?
|
| ""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."
|
| Which is contained in both the link you provided, and on
| their official Privacy FAQ: https://www.mozilla.org/en-
| US/privacy/faq/
|
| I'm really confused how you can possibly claim that they
| removed the wording when it's right there for you.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Here is the next sentence from that FAQ:
|
| > 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)
|
| So they are sharing your data with partners, commercially.
| but only in "anonymized" form so its OK?
| Aeolun wrote:
| The only thing they need to do to make Firefox
| commercially viable is to have me pay them for the
| browser.
| zecg wrote:
| I'd pay $50 yearly if they're willing to just work on the
| browser and remove their added value services and any
| telemetry.
| zecg wrote:
| Are we reading the same thing? They removed:
|
| > We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike
| other companies, we don't sell access to your data.
|
| and instead there's vague weaseling
|
| > doesn't sell data about you (in the way that most people
| think about "selling data")
|
| I'm not like most people, I am a bit stupid and have a very
| low threshold for what selling my data is.
|
| > 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.
|
| You can either have 2.5% of users who know why they are
| using your browser and are willing to make a donation or
| you can have nothing while we use a fork with your
| telemetry ripped out.
| achrono wrote:
| What a neat sleight of hand. "We're actually Truly Good,
| but those annoying lawyers won't let us call ourselves
| that, so we kind of take that back, but you get the idea
| right?"
| foxylad wrote:
| Look at what they are ACTUALLY doing:
|
| https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
|
| The change removing _" Does Firefox sell your personal data?
| Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of
| the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to
| protect your privacy. That's a promise."_ makes it pretty clear
| that the intention in the changes is NOT just covering their
| bums for using your input to provide the webpage you wanted.
| They are positioning to sell your personal data.
|
| That promise to never have, never will sell your personal data
| was highly valued by many Firefox users and Mozilla must be
| pretty desperate to break it.Particularly given online privacy
| is suddenly crucial for many out-groups in the US - and pretty
| much everyone outside the US. The biggest marketing opportunity
| for years just landed in Mozilla's lap, and they spilled it.
| handoflixue wrote:
| Full context, from the link YOU provided: ""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."
|
| There is no reasonable way to read this as an attempt to sell
| your data. This quote is also reiterated in the linked
| Privacy FAQ on their official site:
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/
| int_19h wrote:
| Is there an actual genuine legal threat or something that
| prompted this change, or is it just some bored lawyer.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| That text continues with this:
|
| > 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).
|
| So they share data with partners, which helps to make
| Firefox commercially viable, meaning those partners pay
| them for that data. Or in other words, Mozilla sells user
| data. Even when anonymized or aggregated, it's still
| selling data.
| replete wrote:
| > to help you navigate
|
| This definition of helping me (a user} navigate could be
| interpreted in many ways, from the obvious all the way through
| to sending Mozilla my data so they can "improve Firefox" and
| therefore help me through giving them my information. This
| signals intent against my interest, regardless of whether that
| actually is there intent. The 'help' in particular is extremely
| suspicious and ambiguous
| exrhizo wrote:
| Thank you sir.
| ashu1461 wrote:
| https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
|
| This commit says that they can know sell your data as well,
| which does look beyond using them for improving their software
| Gud wrote:
| And how do I deny Mozilla this request to grant them a license
| "to help me"?
|
| Firefox is dead. What do I use now?
| handoflixue wrote:
| From the link that was already provided:
|
| "(BTW there are opt-outs linked from each chapter/category of
| data, like sponsored content in new tab experience etc. that
| should lead you through settings to disable such telemetry.
| Nothing has changed about that, and you can always find it in
| the privacy center. The changeset you're looking at here is
| just to remove things that are unfortunately not that simple,
| and need explaining in the full legal documents instead.)"
| thorw93040494 wrote:
| In EU user can not legally give up ownership of their personal
| data, artwork, or intelectual property. "Giving license" is a
| legal workaround to get ownership.
| graemep wrote:
| That varies between EU countries.
| mrweasel wrote:
| My ISP doesn't need a license to everything I do online to
| facilitate the transfer of bits from my home to the wider
| internet, so why should Mozilla need that? How about the
| transit providers, they certainly don't have a license to
| anything I do.
|
| Assuming that everything is HTTPS, what are they actually
| licencing? My encrypted data?
|
| This is some Mozilla legally idiot that went WAY to far in a
| "cover our ass" legal document and nobody stopped to think
| about the potential damage this would to the Mozilla and
| Firefox reputation, which already isn't doing so well. They
| didn't even stop to think if MAYBE this needed some
| clarification, to avoid unwarranted speculations. It's getting
| increasingly clear that the people running Mozilla has
| absolutely no idea what they are doing, nor do they have any
| respect for the project they've are in charge of. At this point
| I wouldn't be surprise to learn that the Mozilla CEO uses Edge.
| mariusor wrote:
| I think everyone is unsettled about the fact that Mozilla was
| able "to help you ... as you indicate" for twenty years before
| today without the need of a license agreement. And so we ask:
| what's changed?
| mppm wrote:
| I think you are bending the meaning of the word _license_ to
| the breaking point here. What your analysis implies, is that
| Mozilla needs _permission to store and process your data_ in
| order to carry out the services implied by your use of Firefox.
| Obtaining a "nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license" is
| definitely an excessive move in that context.
| tomp wrote:
| _> complete lie_
|
| I disagree. I definitely editorialized it to make it attention-
| grabbing and point out the essence, because I wanted to raise
| awareness and spur discussion.
|
| But they do _own_ it in the digital sense (i.e. "piracy is not
| stealing" sense). You get to keep your own copy, but they also
| get a copy _and they own that copy_.
|
| _> help you navigate, experience, and interact with online
| content_
|
| These terms are vague enough to allow pretty much everything.
| Google would argue that tracking your information so they
| target ads is "helping you navigate" ("you see, sponsored links
| are more relevant!"). As well as "lets train an AI model that
| helps users experience the internet!"
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| > Title is a complete lie/misleading. They get a license, not
| ownership.
|
| I completely agree. Saw the HN title, clicked through to the
| page and saw nothing relevant to the title. I've flagged the
| topic now.
| miju293 wrote:
| 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?
| zihotki wrote:
| The main problem with the "important part in cursive" is that
| it's Mozilla execs who decide what is actually a "to help you".
| There is no way to opt-out of "help".
| animitronix wrote:
| Trash take. Don't try to make this seem ok.
| krick wrote:
| Honestly, I am a bit surprised dang didn't change the title,
| given all the outrage and huge number of upvotes. Regardless of
| whether your analysis is missing anything, it just says what
| license doesn't say, and in that sense, yes, it's a complete
| lie, and people who were completely ok with what's going on
| yesterday are completely outraged and are massively switching
| to brave/chromium(lol)/ladybird again.
|
| And, honestly, at this point this feels seriously misguided.
| However many bad things I can say about Mozilla, what _really_
| has changed on 25 Feb? Nothing much, really. The removed claim
| that they don 't sell user data (linked in another comment)
| might be actually the bigger news here. But that also is much
| less important than what data they can actually gather
| (compared to brave/chromium/ladybird/whatever). If you can
| still disable tracking as before, well, ok.
|
| Obviously, I don't think it's ideal in any case, and I'd rather
| like to have the same relationships with my browser as I have
| with Vim. But that is besides the point, the point being that
| news aren't really news (at least, definitely not the same news
| as 90% of posters in the topic are perceiving/discussing).
| dang wrote:
| Thanks--we've updated the title to mention licenses now. I
| think probably we'll end up merging all these threads; not sure
| yet.
|
| Edit: merging into
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185909.
|
| Earlier thread (in this case) was
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065, which had that
| title.
| cute_boi wrote:
| https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
|
| They removed this: {
| "@type": "Question", "name": "Does Firefox
| sell your personal data?", "acceptedAnswer":
| { "@type": "Answer",
| "text": "Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from
| many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to
| protect your privacy. That's a promise. " }
| },
| replete wrote:
| They bought an ad company back in November I think, so this is
| not a surprise to me. Boiling frogs
| rvz wrote:
| > "That's a promise."
|
| That always has been a lie, ever since they accepted Google's
| money.
|
| Now due to the anti-trust lawsuit, 'principles' don't pay the
| bills. Now you are seeing that Firefox doesn't care about the
| privacy of its users.
| maxrmk wrote:
| I think this probably isn't as big of a deal as people are making
| it out to be. But I find a certain kind of joy in Mozilla being
| judged on the worst possible interpretation of their terms of
| service, since they do that to others _all the time_ [1].
|
| [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/
| johnklos wrote:
| The first few steps on a slippery slope never do seem like a
| big deal, do they?
| koolala wrote:
| They sell your data now. Their strings are pulled.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I tend to agree with you, but I'd _hope_ that given how badly
| this has been received, Mozilla finds some better writers to
| put some better thought into the contents of their ToS and
| issue some corrections in the near future.
| nullc wrote:
| > being judged on the worst possible interpretation
|
| That's the correct way-- contract terms must be read
| defensively.
| talles wrote:
| Anyone using a fork? I'm thinking on migrating to
| https://floorp.app
| arch1e wrote:
| I've been using Zen (https://github.com/zen-browser) for a
| while now, it's still in beta but is very cool.
| erikbye wrote:
| Switched to Vivaldi long time ago. For reasons like this, ToS,
| Mozilla changing their mission, etc.
|
| Vivaldi respects your privacy, supports Chrome extensions, and
| all the customizations you'd ever need.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Vivaldi is probably the most ethical company making a for-
| profit browser now. But note that because it is a for-profit it
| tracks your installation, with an anonymous but unique id, and
| phones home every time you use the browser. There were
| complains about this in the forum, but Vivaldi said they had to
| do that to know how many _unique_ users they have, to make
| browser deals with other companies. They refused to change that
| and instead suggested that interested parties could use an
| application firewall to block those connections from Vivaldi.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it still an issue that
| due to Chromium not supporting the V2 manifest, adblockers like
| Ublock Origin won't function in Vivaldi?
| pilaf wrote:
| This made me look into Firefox forks/alternatives:
|
| Librewolf [1] seems to be fairly active (last commit on Codeberg
| was last week) and up-to-date with the latest upstream releases
| (mirrors FF's versioning scheme and matches their latest). Has a
| nice focus on privacy and no-telemetry.
|
| Floorp [2] also looks active (last commit last week), also claims
| focus on privacy. Based off FF's extended support releases so it
| may lag behind in latest features.
|
| Waterfox [3] is also active (last commit a few hours ago), also
| big focus on privacy, but it uses a custom versioning scheme so I
| can't tell how closely it follows FF's releases.
|
| GNU IceCat's [4] latest release was in November 02023, so it
| looks like it may be abandoned.
|
| Does anyone have any experience with any of these, good or bad?
| With all of them more or less promising the same things it's hard
| to tell which one may be the better option.
|
| 1: https://librewolf.net/
|
| 2: https://floorp.app/en
|
| 3: https://www.waterfox.net/
|
| 4: https://icecatbrowser.org/
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Iceweasel has been around for sometime:
|
| https://github.com/adonais
|
| https://sourceforge.net/projects/libportable/files/Iceweasel...
|
| Forks can be healthy for a number of reasons =3
| pilaf wrote:
| Oh, I thought IceWeasel had been renamed to IceCat, but the
| repo you linked to has recent activity and calls it
| IceWeasel, now I'm a bit confused. Glad to see it's active
| though.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The Gnu Icecat is still active as well.
|
| Compiling Firefox without telemetry is just a flag, as we
| discovered while doing something over the debugging
| interface not available in the Windmill Test Framework.
| Tip: running profiles off a ram drive reaches ludicrous
| speeds.
|
| Tor Browser also works:
| https://www.torproject.org/download/languages/
|
| Best of luck =3
| wright-goes wrote:
| I use librewolf as my daily driver after the Firefox "privacy
| preserving ad measurement" SNAFU last year [1,2]. The
| fingerprint resistant and anti-canvas functions were different,
| but I got used to them and I really appreciate the added
| features.
|
| With that, having everything turned on can break some sites. If
| a site wasn't all that important and isn't respecting privacy,
| I just won't visit it. Otherwise, I'll keep another browser
| around just in case I absolutely must for business or something
| else.
|
| When Firefox began opting people in by default to leak data to
| advertisers, it felt like the beginning of the end to me. After
| looking into canvas and other fingerprinting capabilities, it's
| somehow still surprising and alarming to me how far companies
| go to invade our privacy.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40971247 2.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40974112
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Try going to gitlab.com with librewolf, you'll see a white page
| with no content. Librewolf is blocked off from half the
| internet that uses cloudflare, so it's kind of a useless
| browser.
|
| Every browser that's not a majority browser will be associated
| with these kind of blocking risk. I can't risk access to my
| financially important accounts, nobody can. So to me this is
| not a feasible alternative.
|
| The only way to build a browser is to act like one of the
| others, and to behave like one of the others. Can't use brave,
| given their history, but farbling approach is the most
| sustainable solution in my opinion.
|
| My remaining hope is that ladybird will actively deny
| implementing web standards that can be used for fingerprinting.
|
| Something as simple as overflow:hidden is used on every website
| to force people to get tracked by having to activate JS, and
| things like this should be something a web browser should
| protect its users from.
|
| We need a CSS engine that denies setting these kinds of things,
| because JS fingerprint prevention isn't enough if every website
| breaks because of it.
|
| If you want a headstart, I tried forking webkit and do exactly
| this. Project is unmaintained because couldn't work fulltime on
| it without funding. Maybe somebody else picks it up? [1]
|
| [1] https://github.com/tholian-network/retrokit
| the-grump wrote:
| This is purely FUD per my experience. I use librewolf on
| websites behind cloudflare and with plenty of js. They all
| work just as well as they did in Firefox.
|
| Librewolf sends Firefox in the user agent, and you can toggle
| Firefox "features" on if a website you use requires them.
|
| Not trying to convince you to switch to it--you do you. Just
| sharing with someone who might be reading this thread and
| that hasn't tried librewolf.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| The amount of re-edits of your comment are a bit off the
| charts.
|
| Why do you think I have a personal stake in this? Why do
| you feel personally attacked by my comment?
|
| I am sorry if I somehow personally offended you!? Not sure
| how I could've phrased my comment differently.
| the-grump wrote:
| Yeah, I thought it was unnecessarily confrontational and
| tried to make it clear that's not my intent.
|
| I'm not offended in the slightest, just a very happy user
| who wants to encourage other people to try librewolf for
| themselves.
| jmholla wrote:
| Yea, I just went clicking all over gitlab.com and their own
| repository without issue on LibreWolf.
| hans_castorp wrote:
| > Try going to gitlab.com with librewolf, you'll see a white
| page with no content.
|
| > If you want a headstart, I tried forking webkit and do
| exactly this
|
| > [1] https://github.com/tholian-network/retrokit
|
| I just opened that page on LibreWolf without any problems.
| windward wrote:
| Lab and hub are different words.
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| > gitlab.com with librewolf, you'll see a white page with no
| content
|
| It works fine, even with JS disabled.
| fady0 wrote:
| you should add zen browser[1] too, i tried some from your list,
| librewolf breaks some websites (online banking doesn't work)
| floorp is a good one, but in my experience zen is better.
|
| 1: https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop
| whitehexagon wrote:
| thanks for the research. I just quickly tried them all. I have
| an older mac with older FF. Results: librewolf and waterfox
| wont run (10.15 min) and the floorp (react) website crashes.
| IceCat runs! and seems to use LibreJS for javascript, so my
| first few tests failed because you have to individually allow
| scripts per site. I quite like that idea! although my quick
| test of breakout (HN yesterday) runs slow/stuttery. A couple
| other sites are throwing up js console errors, so I need to
| play around with it more. It did enable me to access the floorp
| website, but also 10.15 min. I guess this helps me migrate
| faster to my asahi setup, although I've been trying to keep
| that one away from daily browsing and the little web of
| horrors.
|
| I wonder if this FF change is pre AI infection, which might end
| up affecting these other builds too. Pretty disappointing after
| such strong privacy promises for so long, whatever the reason
| for these changes.
| cam_l wrote:
| I thought Firefox sync and VPN was end to end encrypted.
|
| That is a far bigger wtf than dumb unenforceable tos text.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| _> dumb unenforceable tos text_
|
| It is unenforceable by YOU, since Mozilla has reserved all
| rights to all the data you put through your browser. Which is
| why I'm currently using LibreWolf for the first time.
| terminalbraid wrote:
| It is. The data exfiltration is more through telemetry vectors
| as they currently use. A VPN can't help you with that and while
| they can't see your bookmarks stored in the sync service
| because they don't have the encryption key, they technically
| could do what they like once that is decrypted and in memory.
|
| Librewolf can use Mozilla's existing Firefox Sync and because
| of the end-to-end encryption you get the privacy you wanted
| _that way_ [1].
|
| [1] https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#can-i-use-firefox-sync-
| with-...
| m-schuetz wrote:
| The text leaves way too much up for shady interpretation. At that
| point I might as well fully switch to Chrome, even at home.
| Privacy was the single last reason for sticking with firefox, and
| these terms do not sound like privacy anymore.
| drpossum wrote:
| Chrome is absolutely not a step in the right direction if this
| is pushing you away from Firefox. Look at the number of forks
| that strip out this nonsense and behave functionally
| identically instead.
| m-schuetz wrote:
| I'm not going to go out of my way to fetch a modified build
| for a functionally worse browser. I only use FF at home due
| to privacy, but since that is no longer covered by Mozilla I
| might as well use the browser I've already been using for web
| dev for years at work.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Title is inaccurate. Mozilla get a nonexclusive license. That is
| different from ownership.
|
| The license grant in these terms does not specify the license is
| irrevocable. The licensor, i.e., the Firefox user, reserves the
| right to revoke.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| The license does not say that Mozilla owns information that the
| user inputs through Firefox. But the HN title does. If Mozilla
| owns the information then it would have no need for a license.
| Further, the license does not specify that it is perpetual. A
| Firefox user does not grant Mozilla perpetual rights to use the
| information. These rights can be terminated.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks--we've updated the title to mention licenses now. I
| think probably we'll end up merging all these threads; not sure
| yet.
|
| Edit: merging into
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185909.
|
| Earlier thread (in this case) was
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065, which had that
| title.
| archsurface wrote:
| IANAL - does that mean if I, in the UK, get arrested for wrong
| think on X I can redirect the police to Mozilla?
| im3w1l wrote:
| I think it's time to bring this to the attention of the EU. The
| browser race to the bottom may be somewhat acceptable for
| entertainment, but it is my firm opinion that accessing online
| government services and banking infrastructure necessary for a
| modern life shouldn't require me to accept such terms.
| Piraty wrote:
| I agree but unfortunately very few see this as an issue. For
| browsers, they kind of soft-lock-out established niche browsers
| due to heavy use of JS. But this is deepter: more and more
| banks and public institutions' services imply everyone and
| their grandma possesses G/A-owned device so they start to
| require these to access their web services (either through
| exclusive app access via A/G app ecosystem or by enforcing 2FA
| (T)OTP which implies using such device for non-devlopers). Some
| countries force kids to use apple/google-owned devices in
| class. All of this requires citizens to accept and agree to
| (possibly changing) TOS and privacy rules (self) of A+G and
| opting out is hard often times and sometimes impossible. very
| sad
| boredatoms wrote:
| Urgh Mozilla needs to focus on being a good web browser, Id even
| pay, but you cant
| Rafuino wrote:
| I pay for Relay... I'm sure it's a mistake though bc it'll get
| ended sometime soon and I'll have to figure out how to transfer
| all my email aliases elsewhere...
| jmward01 wrote:
| I am, unfortunately, looking at alternative browsers because of
| this. Firefox was the best fit. Big enough that they could
| reasonably keep up but not one of the corporate browsers that I
| have 0 trust in. It wasn't perfect but it was better than chrome
| for sure.
|
| Browsers are like cars now. It is becoming impossible to buy a
| new(er) car and have your privacy respected, but it is
| unreasonable to expect any normal life (at least in most of the
| US) without using cars or browsers. So, things like cars and
| browsers should have strong protections because there is no
| avoiding them. Unfortunately that is obviously not the case. You
| should never be forced to sign an adversarial TOS to earn a
| living or live a normal life, but here we are. TOS that are
| effective without you even reading them, that say they own you,
| everything you type, everything you do, that change and bind you
| without your consent or knowledge and what are you going to do
| about it? Given any reasonable choice I will take it, but the
| reasonable choices are dwindling.
| ivolimmen wrote:
| LibreWolf? It's Firefox without the Mozilla branding
| zorrolovsky wrote:
| I've been using LibreWolf as my daily driver for a couple of
| years. Highly recommended! Available for Windows, MacOS and
| Linux. Ranked as the highest for privacy protection in a 2022
| study: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/06/15/privacytests-
| reveals-how-y...
|
| Occasionally, you might get a broken website but to fix it
| you just click on the shield icon and lower the privacy
| settings.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Any recommendations for an Android Firefox replacement?
| hans_castorp wrote:
| I am using IronFox (on GrapheneOS). But I don't really use
| my phone for browsing the internet very often.
| whou wrote:
| Fennec on F-Droid
| goode wrote:
| I use https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
| for its ability to install any extension, including
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean. If you
| don't need that, I'd recommend IronFox because of its
| explicit security goals.
| mort96 wrote:
| I switched to LibreWolf over this, and it's good so far. A
| couple of things:
|
| * I had to switch off the fingerprinting protection. For me,
| running at 60 FPS and without automatic CSS dark mode
| detection isn't worth whatever fingerprint resistance it
| provides. Sadly, you don't have granular control over RFP,
| you have to turn it off entirely.
|
| * It doesn't have Google Search available by default, but it
| turned out to be fairly straightforward to add. DuckDuckGo is
| just too slow to load for me compared to Google, and their AI
| integration is stupid. Google doesn't have AI answers and
| text fields like DDG does in my region.
|
| * Their implementation of container tabs don't seem to
| support automatically opening certain URLs in certain
| containers, which is annoying. Maybe I can get the official
| container tabs extension working, but I kinda wish LibreWolf
| either had proper container tabs or left it out in favour of
| the Mozilla extension.
|
| Otherwise, it seems great. I found it hard to pick between
| all the different Firefox forks and rebrands, but LibreWolf
| seemed like one of the more serious ones and I don't regret
| going with it.
| kome wrote:
| honestly, at this point it makes sense to use vanilla
| Firefox for you, that offers exactly what you need and it's
| still quite good about privacy.
| mort96 wrote:
| I agree, which is why I used vanilla Firefox until now. I
| don't want or need the additional privacy features
| LibreWolf (or other forks) offer.
|
| But I don't want to use a browser from a company which
| gives themselves a broad license to do whatever they want
| with whatever data I enter into the browser. It's
| probably just a matter of time until Mozilla exercises
| this right to send stuff I enter into Firefox back to
| Mozilla for ad targeting and AI training purposes, and I
| don't want that. I have some faith that the LibreWolf
| team will notice such features and rip them out when they
| appear.
| kome wrote:
| "But I don't want to use a browser from a company which
| gives themselves a broad license to do whatever they want
| with whatever data I enter into the browser"
|
| As this discussion made abundantly clear, that's not what
| it says at all.
| mort96 wrote:
| Nothing I have seen makes that clear at all. In fact,
| from what I can see, the ToS makes it very clear that
| they are giving themselves a license in the way I
| describe:
|
| > 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.
|
| Mozilla is clearly planning to do _something_ which
| requires them to have given themselves this license, and
| I 'd rather not be on Firefox when we figure out what
| that is.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I switched because of this. Day 1 so no opinion yet.
| mherrmann wrote:
| Brave is fantastic.
| jmb99 wrote:
| You can always buy old cars. Can't use old browsers unless you
| really like getting pwned.
| gfkclzhzo wrote:
| Icecat is the GNU build of the open-source base of Firefox. I
| think that's the best bet until Ladybird is ready for daily
| diving.
|
| Fennec on Android.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| I'm shocked when in 2025 the term "you stay in control" regarding
| browser emerges as something exclusive.
|
| When a web page or a program is downloaded to my computer I
| cannot imagine anything else, yet every major company tries to do
| something opposed - take the control from me as soon as possible.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| My mental model of a browser is the same as of any tool, as a
| hammer, purely defined by its technical capabilities to do a
| job, like to display a website and offer basic functionality
| like for saving a bookmark.
|
| The very idea of an entity called "we", an anonymous and ever-
| changing cast of people managing "responsible defaults" and
| "simple tools to manage your data" and communicating it on
| their terms, making me try and keep up, is alien to this idea.
| They lay their hands on our data; want to know how exactly?
| Follow several links to this page:
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#notice
|
| The page in its tone trivializes the entire deal and is just
| another EULA and as such could just as well be presented in a
| small textbox in all-caps. It's more than the average user will
| ever read, and way too vague anyway.
|
| "Be informed about what data we process about you, why and who
| it's shared with (that's this Notice!)" they say, but
|
| ...how about you show the entire dataset compiled about any
| user with information who is using it and for what exactly
| (excluding truly secret law enforcement requests). Everyone
| involved would be mortified with shame.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| 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 hide
| everything behind 'obscurity-security'; however, this should
| still be code that is a guest on my device, not me being a
| guest on their device running their code. I consider it
| extremely impolite behaviour.
| fiverz wrote:
| 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 background until you interact with the tab
| again.
| pohuing wrote:
| Or install an add on that blocks the api yt uses to
| detect if it's in the background. It wrecks my charge
| though.
| winterbloom wrote:
| 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
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| 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.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Mozilla needs to pay their developers. Donations alone
| don't cover the wages. The way money is divided is rather
| suboptimal at the moment in my opinion, but most of that
| money comes from Google, which may be ruled illegal in
| the coming months if the antitrust case against Google
| pans out well, leaving a hole where 86% of Mozilla's
| funding used to be. They _need_ to make money.
|
| Developing browsers is very expensive. Currently, the
| only people doing that are Google+Microsoft (Blink), the
| megacorps in it for the ad money, Apple, in it for their
| own independence, and Mozilla, trying to be a third
| party. Forks are made constantly by individuals or small
| teams, and are often lagging behind in quality,
| maintenance, and security; Palemoon simply cannot keep up
| with Firefox, KHTML is effectively broken, and even the
| maintained Gnome fork of WebKit has tons of issues that
| make it hard to use it as a daily driver.
|
| Everyone wants a super duper privacy friendly browser
| that only does browser things and preferably only works
| on their personal requirements, but nobody wants to
| actually spend time and money to develop one. I hope
| Ladybird turns out well, or maybe Servo will get revived
| into a functional browser, but how those browsers will be
| developed and distributed is entirely up to those browser
| vendors.
|
| You can use whatever browser you like, but unless you're
| paying a significant sum for it or are part of the dev
| team, you'll have to succumb to the terms under which the
| browser is made available. I'd rather have parties like
| Mozilla funded by donations or independent government
| funds than by big tech, but nobody is willing to spend
| the millions necessary to catch up to Chrome just yet.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Donations alone don't cover the wages
|
| > but unless you're paying a significant sum for it
|
| In fact, zero donations cover wages, and AFAIK nobody is
| paying for it, because Mozilla does not provide any way
| for users to give money to Firefox. You can't blame users
| for not taking an option that was never given.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > - when I see that browser does not allow playing video in
| the background (youtube on mobile phones)
|
| The browser supports it just fine. Youtube itself disables
| that functionality (to try to push you to Youtube Premium).
| You can install an addon from the recommended addons to fix
| that.
|
| > - when my browser disallows me blocking certain things
|
| The only thing I remember Firefox blocking from meddling
| with is pages like mozilla.org and their addon store.
| Which, for security reasons, makes a lot of sense.
|
| > - when my browser prevents me from taking screenshot of
| things I can see on it
|
| That's a setting, though, isn't it? Unless you mean the
| optional DRM support Firefox has. You can disable that
| permanently if you don't like it, though you won't be able
| to visit many DRM-based websites. I've configured my
| browser to request permission before playing DRM based
| content and you'll be surprised how often the permission
| prompt pops up on websites that host normal (non-TV) media.
| amelius wrote:
| Browsers are becoming SmartTVs.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Either you control the software, or the software controls you,
| yadda yadda...
| zombot wrote:
| > _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._
|
| The fact that this surprises me must be an indicator that Mozilla
| still had a good reputation with me. No longer. Starting the
| search for an alternative browser now.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| Is there another browser that can do "container tabs" really the
| only thing that's keeping on Firefox now
| AlgebraFox wrote:
| LibreWolf can do it.
| protocolture wrote:
| I see this thread pop up about once every 3 months for a
| different service. Its always the same license term that spooks
| people.
| kernal wrote:
| To the people that forced their friends and family to switch to
| Firefox be sure to schedule the tech support visit.
| Animats wrote:
| Does using Firefox now force you to use some Mozilla services?
|
| On Android, Fennic isn't bad. Is there a desktop version of
| Fennec?
| sub7 wrote:
| If you're not blocking your mozilla process from accessing
| firefox.com, mozilla.com/.org, and mozgcp.net, as well as turning
| telemetry settings off after every update and keeping a tight
| policy.json file - then firefox is just as bad as Edge or Chrome
| re: tracking
|
| Also they actively take down extensions that unfuck websites
| without notice
|
| Nice picture-in-picture implementation tho
| iszomer wrote:
| Append all Mozilla services and telemetry to Pi-hole? What are
| the other ways this can be quietly mitigated and, the possible
| workarounds to exceptions created by DoH?
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| This is not your computer. This is not your operating system.
| This is not your browser.
| anonnon wrote:
| Interesting that in this thread discussing a new Mozilla EULA/AUP
| (among other things) banning pornography, not one person has
| mentioned that their image library was once called libpr0n:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66984
| maxrf wrote:
| where does it say "own"? it says: "nonexclusive, royalty-free,
| worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate,
| experience, and interact with online content" type something -
| it's "used" to get what "you" want - how is that "own"?
| LeChuck wrote:
| It's fascinating how any Firefox thread here inevitably devolves
| into accusations that Mozilla has abandoned users and a push to
| switch to alternatives, despite Mozilla working in the interest
| of users to a infinitely greater degree than any other major
| browser vendor.
| yupyupyups wrote:
| Actions speak louder than words. Firefox (including
| derivatives) is by far the most fingerprint resistant and
| adblock friendly webbrowser there is.
|
| In terms of features, it's very rich and always improving.
|
| Mozilla also maintains arguably the best web development
| resource there is, which is MDN.
|
| Mozilla's internal problems aside, some people really don't
| appreciate how successful Firefox, Thunderbird and MDN have
| been and still are.
| lukan wrote:
| "Actions speak louder than words. "
|
| Indeed. Talking about privacy and having spyware and ads
| activated by default and now this probably to legally
| safeguard this and more speak a very clear language.
|
| The only reason to still use FF is indeed, that the
| competition is worse in this regard.
|
| But that will change, once Ladybird becomes mature enough.
| gf000 wrote:
| Pinging a Mozilla server to see if there is an active and
| usable internet connection is not spyware, let's stop with
| these useless accusations.
|
| It's a product which optionally does accept some help from
| the users, e.g. opt-in error reports, which is a huge help.
| Certain people consider that a blatant violation of their
| rights for some reason, and they would apparently rather
| see the last bastion of a non-chrome internet die.
| lukan wrote:
| "Pinging a Mozilla server to see if there is an active
| and usable internet connection is not spyware, let's stop
| with these useless accusations."
|
| No, but have you checked your firefox settings lately?
|
| Meaning in the last 5 years or so? (Probably has been
| longer by now)
|
| Some updates brought "allow firefox to install and run
| studies".
|
| That sounded like experimental features, but were in
| reality spyware to study the user behavior to sell that
| data to ad companies.
|
| It is still there. And a more blatant checkbox by default
| also arrived lately. (I think just in forefox mobile)
|
| And then there are ads activated by default.
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-
| report
|
| "How is your data used?"
|
| ... lots of seemingly innocent technical blabla
|
| and then
|
| " Firefox also shares information with our marketing
| partners to measure and improve these campaigns; what
| information is specifically shared varies (depending on
| how you discovered Firefox and your operating system) but
| generally includes how you were referred to our download
| page and whether you actively use Firefox. Where Firefox
| is pre-installed on your device, technical and
| interaction data (your device type and whether Firefox is
| used) will be sent to our marketing partners, and shared
| with Mozilla."
|
| Lots of words and details to hide the kind of important
| detail, that they do sell the data by default how you
| browse the internet. What websites you use, how long etc.
| nullc wrote:
| If all of these 'phone home' features are as benign as
| you say-- why isn't there a clear, exposed, and stable
| user setting to disable them?
|
| At best there is maze of about:config which incompletely
| prevent firefox from phoning home and are regularly
| undermined by new additions.
| itake wrote:
| > Firefox (including derivatives) is by far the most
| fingerprint resistant
|
| Do you have a source? The fingerprint detectors [0] as well
| as reddit's banned/duplicate account system suggests
| otherwise.
|
| Maybe at one point Firefox stopped the fingerprinting, but
| the tools have quickly found other ways to uniquely identify
| me.
|
| [0] - https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/kcarter?aat=1 https://f
| irstpartysimulator.org/kcarter?&aat=1&a=11&t=11&dnt...
| yupyupyups wrote:
| Try Mullvad Browser or Librewolf, both of which are derived
| from Firefox.
|
| These projects are made possible because of Firefox's
| customizability and feature set.
|
| Firefox has a fingerprint resist toggle that may not be on
| when using vanilla Firefox.
| mzajc wrote:
| Worth noting is that many of these features come from the
| Tor Uplift project[0]. I'm not sure if they'd exist if it
| weren't for Tor's work.
|
| [0]: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-advancing-
| privacy-in...
| rdtsc wrote:
| It's about expectations. In very simple language: people expect
| Microsoft and Google to track the hell out of them. But Mozilla
| says they are your friend and respects privacy, but then their
| actions speak the opposite.
|
| A betrayal from a friend is harder to handle than a blow from
| an enemy.
| LeChuck wrote:
| Mozilla's goals are still much more aligned with my own than
| any other browser vendor. Not even close. It's not a
| betrayal, it's a difference of opinion between friends.
|
| Edit: If that. I personally think this Terms of Use thing is
| a storm in a teacup.
| windward wrote:
| Are they? Their incentive is to maintain their revenue
| stream, almost all of which currently comes from Google.
| That source is now under threat so, to continue being able
| to pay the bills, they need to find another. And it's a big
| hole to fill.
|
| Google's goals were once noble.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Edit: If that. I personally think this Terms of Use thing
| is a storm in a teacup.
|
| You may be right, yeah. I don't actually use Firefox, there
| was something else they did like this before which spooked
| me off. I was mainly explaining the seemingly odd response
| people have about this, and why they created a storm.
|
| It's like a friend who says they are your friend, but then
| don't act like it. As opposed to say a known asshole being
| an asshole, people don't make a big deal about that any
| longer.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Yes, Firefox is the best bad option. But I'm not sure how
| we dont classify it as a betrayal to remove these
| statements: Does Firefox sell your personal
| data? Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect
| you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products
| are designed to protect your privacy. That's a promise.
|
| and ...Unlike other companies, we don't
| sell access to your data...
|
| While also weaseling your words about your new policy and
| how its "basically the same thing if you think about it"
| [1]
|
| [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/ - "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).
| ideamotor wrote:
| The same effect applies to political parties. The people that
| care about X focus their complaints to the party that is
| trying to address issues with X.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Yeah, pretty much. If you look historically, it's always
| that traitors and betrayers get the most severe punishment.
| It just wakes up something very basic in humans.
| unsungNovelty wrote:
| It's disheartening to see people playing villification of users
| when it is the companies (yeah, mozilla CORPORATION) that went
| back on their words. Just cos you did something good in the
| past isn't and shouldn't be an excuse to do bad things now.
|
| Also, why are we talking as if we haven't seen these same
| things happening to favourite products/companies over and over
| again? You don't need to be an analyst to put things together.
|
| Tell me why I should care when they gave up Rust and MDN to
| competitors with the excuse of no money and then gave the boss
| a heft hike with an ever decreasing userbase? Would any company
| give a hike of this margin to it's employee when their product
| is doing bad in the market?
|
| They kept doing things against the community. And then they
| bought an ad company, then this change. ENSHITTIFICATION IS
| WRITTEN ON THE WALL IN BOLD LETTERS. Let them backtrack.
|
| Still very very disappointed. We are supposed to be a community
| who should be thinking through things. This isn't a new
| scenario. We have seen this so many times.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| >despite Mozilla working in the interest of users to a
| infinitely greater degree than any other major browser vendor.
|
| Obviously not anymore, it's a add company now.
|
| But at least they have "cool" party's in Zambia.
| jorams wrote:
| > it's a add company now
|
| Note that "any other major browser vendor" is a short list of
| ad companies with a much worse track record.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| I don't think Apple (Safari) is a ad company.
| jorams wrote:
| They are[1][2]. It makes them billions every year[3]
|
| [1]: https://ads.apple.com [2]:
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/control-how-apple-
| del... [3]:
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/15/apple-ad-
| business...
| BSDobelix wrote:
| Ah ok, but do they have a worse track-record then Google
| Microsoft or Mozilla?
| jorams wrote:
| Relative to Mozilla: on the advertising front I can't
| judge whether Apple is worse or about the same. On most
| other fronts I don't think there's much of a question.
| Others disagree, the extent to which Apple's actions are
| user-hostile is an often debated topic I'm not
| particularly interested in re-threading.
|
| Google and Microsoft aren't really a comparison, both
| have been openly anti-user on many fronts for many years.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| So let's correct your statement then to >>most other
| major browser vendor
|
| ;)
| jorams wrote:
| No, I stand by my statement. I consider Apple extremely
| user-hostile and in many ways worse than Microsoft and
| Google. Those ways are just less broadly agreed upon.
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| Huh? Those aren't in-browser ads. Those are ads delivered
| through installed native apps.
|
| Do you have a source showing that _Safari_ makes money
| from ads?
| dang wrote:
| You're right, and at the same time those two things go together
| if you think about it. The browser that does more (or cares at
| all) is held to the higher standard and inevitably found
| wanting.
|
| (I'm not taking sides in the debate about it, I just find
| internet psychology fascinating)
| anacrolix wrote:
| We're entering the end days now. Stallman showed us the light and
| then ESR closed the blinds.
| anacrolix wrote:
| People really don't get it.
|
| I'm simplifying: Stallman told us that free software was the
| only way. ESR said open source was the way with business in
| mind.
|
| We've ended up with businesses taking advantage of open source.
| The slew of licence changes to not compete, having special paid
| versions, and generally shitting on the open source community.
|
| The only thing free, is the labour companies are exploiting.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| >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[1]. Smells like bullshit to me. You haven't
| had this license for the last 30 years and I've had no trouble
| browsing. What's changed that you suddenly need it?
|
| [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-
| terms-o...
| chinathrow wrote:
| Absolute bullshit.
| mnmalst wrote:
| 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.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| "process user data locally"
|
| Ha! As if slowing down browsing and your computer would have
| a good result.
| Juliate wrote:
| Definitely.
|
| There's a hidden motive, or utter incompetence in managing this
| side of the licensing and communication (either by beginners
| "better cover you ass" MBA or lawyers thinking, which could
| mean it's the result of some consulting firm operation).
|
| Either way, the sudden change without proper communication is
| suspicious.
| Figs wrote:
| They are removing all the text about how they do not sell
| personal data as well.
|
| My suspicion is that this is somehow related to Mozilla
| Anonym: https://www.anonymco.com/
|
| If you haven't already configured "Firefox Data Collection
| and Use" and "Website Advertising Preferences" to not share
| data you should do so immediately.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| What basic functionality are they talking about? Do they list
| it anywhere? Or is "basic functionality" the new "security
| reasons" for justifying every stupid rule or policy.
| like_any_other wrote:
| Tactical vagueness.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| They're covering their asses for something. That could also
| just mean that the old license/terms/privacy policy doesn't
| actually cover the data processing they're already doing (i.e.
| the opt-out telemetry, the account sync mechanism, etc.). If
| they publicly admit that their previous agreements didn't
| provide enough legal cover to allow their basic data
| processing, the class action lawsuit vultures would be all over
| them.
|
| Something something malice something incompetence.
| skwee357 wrote:
| This is very frustrating. It becomes impossible to use the web in
| a privacy conscious way. I know that Firefox wasn't perfect, but
| it was the best we had, and I have been a loyal user, despite
| minor quirks and annoyances. And now this... Guess will have to
| find another browser.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand I just want Firefox
| to keep being a free software web browser that I can trust. But
| on the other hand I realise Firefox isn't some hobby project and
| competing with Google isn't cheap. They already take money from
| Google and this could be shut off at any time. How can Firefox be
| independent if it doesn't have some revenue?
|
| Unfortunately they've been stupid and blurred the lines between
| Firefox the browser and Firefox the "web platform". I don't think
| anyone would be too concerned if this was clearly about the web
| platform bit.
|
| Maybe we need a smaller GPL browser that doesn't have the fancy
| stuff but can actually be maintained by the community. Yeah it
| won't with with a bunch of "web apps", but it will still provide
| access to information. This is also why if you are making
| websites you need to make sure it works without js etc. Otherwise
| you're basically forcing people to use adware.
| drpossum wrote:
| I'm of one mind about this because
|
| > Unfortunately they've been stupid
|
| They could have had an enormous amount of good will and they do
| _nothing_ but burn it. Weird how they get a lot of money from
| google and then, while _technically_ meeting their mission by
| providing a browser alternative, seem to do a lot of self-
| sabotage in google 's favor.
|
| I honestly think the best thing that could happen to Firefox
| would be for Mozilla to exactly have their funding removed,
| have the foundation die, and a better entity focused _just_ on
| Firefox, perhaps with more earnest and honest fundraising
| efforts and not a multimillion CEO salary, fills the vacuum.
| _mitterpach wrote:
| 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 you be quitting firefox over this change, or is there
| simply no better place to leave for?
| rvense wrote:
| Yeah, I've been a Firefox user and Mozilla supporter for
| approaching two decades now, even used to donate monthly to the
| foundation. I'm furious over this. I installed LibreWolf on my
| personal machines last night and expect to uninstall Firefox
| after work today.
| Parae wrote:
| I'm a happy LibreWolf for years. The transition from FF to
| LibreWolf is seamless. And you won't be surprised anymore nor
| annoyed when Mozilla does moves like that.
| rvense wrote:
| I probably will, actually. It was good to have an ally with
| their stature and history.
| linker3000 wrote:
| It's seamless-ish.
|
| Sometimes the more aggressive privacy settings stop some
| sites from rendering properly unless you add canvas
| exceptions, for example Openstreetmap and UK National Rail.
|
| I'm happy to make the effort.
|
| /Librewolf on desktop, Waterfox on mobile.
| c0l0 wrote:
| "No better place to leave for" seems an apt way to put it.
|
| I think/fear that in the long run, there will be fewer and
| fewer ways to participate in activities and communities on the
| web on your own terms, as only a vetted, allowlisted set of
| client builds (that may be "open source" on the tin, but by
| that point it is effectively meaningless) will be able to pass
| CDN "anti-abuse" restrictions. It will not be a better web, but
| it sure will be more profitable for some.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > No better place to leave for
|
| This is an amazingly common psychological trap. You wouldn't
| believe the number of people, men as well as women, who end
| up in the therapy chair, at the police station or at the
| hospital A&E, because they are "stuck" with a violent and
| abusive partner.
|
| The modern tech landscape is all about abuse. People use
| fancy names for it like "enshitification" or "rot economy" -
| but at the end of the day it's about domination and abusive
| relations.
|
| A very common position here is that the victim sees "no
| alternative".
|
| And... surprise surprise, where they get that idea from is
| the partner, friends, group/organisation that is also toxic
| and colludes in gas-lighting and co-abusing the victim into a
| limited worldview.
|
| Once the victim spends any amount of time outside that mental
| prison, they regain perspective and say... "Oh, so I actually
| do have choices!".
| mafuy wrote:
| This is a poor analogy. There are thousands of people to
| meet and bond with, so you do have a choice. But there are
| less than a handful of fundamentally different browsers.
|
| Derivative browsers don't really count here, as they depend
| on the upstream to not hurt them. For instance, if the
| parent project completely removes something essential for
| privacy, it it a lot of work to keep it in your code. The
| Manifest v2 removal is an example. Over time, when other
| changes are built on the removal, this creates an
| increasingly high burden. Eventually, the child project is
| starved. You simply do not want to be in this position.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I don't think the analogy is weakened by bringing
| numbers/quantity into it. The dynamics work for any
| number of principals. Take a 3 player game, where Alice
| trusts Bob but is better off with Bill, however Bill is
| not visible to her because of chaff/disinfo/noise
| broadcast by Bob or Bob's confederates.
|
| It's not what Mozilla _does_ , it's about what Mozilla
| _says /claims_.
|
| Mozilla is a deceptive/defective entity here.
| don_esteban wrote:
| So, where is the better Bill of browsers that Mozilla is
| preventing me learning about?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The numbers matter because they affect whether there
| actually is a better option.
|
| What happens when Alice _is_ with Bill, but Bill is
| _also_ abusive to a lesser extent? And "don't have a
| browser" is not an option.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| You only need one better browser to switch to. I guess
| you're getting at a Hobson's choice [0], that there
| really is only one browser and all others are copies of
| the same harmful set of properties, so moving isn't worth
| the overhead (switch cost is a factor in this that we
| often ignore). To my mind, there must be at least one
| browser out there that is "less undesirable" than that
| case. Just iterate your way into your comfort zone.
|
| So often arguments on this axis come down to how much
| convenience are you going to give up for the trust
| relation you desire. We get stuck if we mistake
| convenience for necessity thereby bringing absolutes into
| a continuous trade-off problem.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I wouldn't say there's only _one_ , but there are two
| main clusters for anyone not on a mac, and a handful of
| teams large enough to do a solid job of running their own
| variant. There's precious little iteration to do.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I'm not a typical user [0] but am very mindful of the
| typical user. Maybe I'd not realised how much the browser
| space has shrunk and that the _experience_ of
| "browsing", the abstract task, now breaks down into more
| specialised tasks.
|
| I'm thinking lately the myth of the "browser" and "web"
| as coherent data spaces is something even Sir Tim gave up
| on, right? If the centre cannot hold constellations of
| specialised clients (which are already "apps" in a sense)
| look like enduring in the near future at the expense of
| interoperability and standards. The "best browser" will
| be the one that strikes the most deals with the parts of
| the network people want to connect to. It's just like the
| best "game console".
|
| That seems really bleak for the Internet qua people's
| network.
|
| No doubt http/s and the worlds of port 80/443 will endure
| eternal, but the "Universal" search and information space
| the pioneers and then proto-Google aspired to now seems
| so remote that the idea of a "browser" is itself a little
| ridiculous to beards like me. I think today the "browser"
| has become a clique of PKI suites and CAs, at the behest
| of banking and retail, backed by broken but well meaning
| regulation, and unwittingly creating this monster we
| still call "The Browser". anyway, peace.
|
| [0] I use w3m for 99% of my daily drive and a sandboxed
| degoogled chromium for any of the "messy stuff"
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > This is a poor analogy. There are thousands of people
| to meet and bond with, so you do have a choice. But there
| are less than a handful of fundamentally different
| browsers.
|
| This is because users decided that they want a browser
| that spies on them.
|
| At least in Germany in hacker and IT-affine circles, you
| will often be frowned upon if you voluntarily use Chrome
| or Edge (except if you have a really good reason).
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > At least in Germany in hacker and IT-affine circles,
| you will often be frowned upon if you voluntarily use
| Chrome or Edge (except if you have a really good reason).
|
| That's largely the same here, at least for anyone worth
| their salt. But how does that matter when Mozilla's
| pulling things like this?
|
| For years now your only browser choices are "Google", and
| "funded by Google", and it shows.
|
| I can't even give someone too hard of a time for using
| vanilla chromium or similar anymore; Not like it's any
| worse than literally every other browser offering
| nowadays, minus rare exceptions like librewolf or
| ungoogled chromium that also add a whole host of minor
| technical complications to use.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Okay. So why don't you tell us what the better choice(s)
| are?
| perihelions wrote:
| What's the purpose of gating "we don't sell access to your
| data" by "if switch('firefox-tou')"? {%
| 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>
| nicbn wrote:
| Does that in multiple places. Maybe they wanted a way to
| quickly revert it? Or enable on countries where they think
| they can get away with it?
| jordanb wrote:
| They said in the commit comment that the new TOU will "roll
| out" to different people at different times.
| chad1n wrote:
| I quit the original l"Firefox" a long time ago, I've been using
| librewolf since its release and now zen (also a firefox fork)
| and I keep ungoogled chromium in case a site is broken on
| firefox.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I'll stay for the time being because there is no better
| alternative.
| matsemann wrote:
| > _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 must be perfect or else..
| windward wrote:
| 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.
| jordanb wrote:
| I use Firefox, and advocate for people to use Firefox,
| because I believe it's the one browser that is not evil. It's
| the entire reason for the existence of Firefox.
|
| Saying, well, why aren't you upset that Chrome is evil is
| such a confusion of ideas I barely know how to respond. Yes,
| I know Chrome is evil, I've been telling people that for many
| years, and I don't use it.
| dgb23 wrote:
| > It's annoying how we hold some to a higher standard, but
| ignore others doing worse.
|
| People use FF, _because_ they can hold it to a higher
| standard. That's the entire point.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| I have long left the sinking ship and switched to enshitified
| and actually private https://librewolf.net/
| KingMob wrote:
| Which will go under within a few years of FF dying. (Yes, the
| current code may still work, but the web will move on without
| it.)
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| I am very aware but that does not change that currently its
| a superior alternative.
| em-bee wrote:
| i don't think that matters. we are looking for firefox
| based alternatives to get away from stupid policy changes,
| not to find a browser that has a better chance of survival.
|
| any alternatives will be good as long as firefox is alive.
| if firefox itself dies, then that's an entirely different
| matter.
| 1cecreamface wrote:
| 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 about by taking my tax money and pouring it into
| these companies to gain compliance to state agendas. This isn't
| something the 'community' will be able to stave off.
|
| If the internet is just going to become another medium like TV,
| Radio and newspapers were for so many years, adding on top the
| ability of the producers to watch me watching them, then it's
| over. The tech community is full of intellectual dishonest
| sellouts. Game over. Let's push letsencrypt again in response
| to the state backdooring the certificate authorities, duuurrr.
| "AI", duurrrr.
| account-5 wrote:
| What other tools are you using instead of Firefox and/or a
| browser?
|
| How does discovery work with tools like yt-dlp?
| hysan wrote:
| Yes, I'll be leaving. I used to prefer Firefox but have long
| since moved to Safari for browsing and <insert Chromium based
| browser> for web dev. Every year I give switching to FF a try.
| I've been using it for everything since mid-December but it's
| honestly a pretty bad user experience. This is the move that's
| gonna make me stop for this year's trial run and all future
| ones. It's simply not worth my time if their ideals don't align
| with mine anymore. Safari and Chromium have their issues but I
| know what benefits I'm trading off for. Without ideals, FF has
| no standout features compared to the alternatives (for me).
| lallysingh wrote:
| I'll look for somewhere else. Web browsers aren't as special as
| they used to be, there's a lot more choice now. Funny thing
| was, I was paying for Firefox through some of their services
| (VPN) that I had no intent to use.
| askonomm wrote:
| Can't wait for Ladybird to become usable. To be fair, it already
| is fairly usable, but I'd need history syncing / Keychain sync to
| make it a daily driver.
| j-bos wrote:
| Do you really? Seems you can wait, as do many of us. By
| waiting, what behavior do we encourage in software makers?
| askonomm wrote:
| I suppose I could manually copy paste things, but it's not a
| great user experience. I'm fine with using beta software, but
| pre-alpha even is a bit too hard for me to swallow.
| lifeinthevoid wrote:
| Does Chrome have a similar policy that says that it owns a
| license to your data?
| jimjimwii wrote:
| > You agree to indemnify and hold Mozilla and its affiliates
| harmless for any liability or claim from your use of Firefox, to
| the extent permitted by applicable law.
|
| Yikes. Good thing i was never informed or agreed to this
| nonsense.
| Evidlo wrote:
| Isn't limitation of liability part of virtually every open
| source license?
|
| From MIT license:
|
| > IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE
| FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
| OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
| CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
| THE SOFTWARE.
|
| From GPLv3 license:
|
| > ... IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED
| TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO
| MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE
| LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL,
| INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR
| INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM ...
| rvz wrote:
| All talk of "Privacy", "Principles" and "Promises" from Mozilla
| was already empty as they were completely dependent on Google's
| money.
|
| This should surprise absolutely no-one and Mozilla _never_ cared
| about their claims of privacy or their users as long as Google
| was paying them.
|
| So now we know that when it comes down to the wire as their
| biggest customer (Google) was under anti-trust scrutiny;
| indirectly threatening Mozilla's deal with Google, They once
| again chose to violate the privacy of their users to sell their
| data to other companies like Google.
|
| For Mozilla, money has always crushed their so-called
| "principles".
| neilv wrote:
| I bet there are still some software developers there who
| genuinely care about the mission.
|
| Other than that, I've had to backspace and abort comments so
| much tonight, because I was angry beyond decorum, at the
| repeated betrayals.
| arjunaaqa wrote:
| Cool down friend.
|
| There will always be great people building alternatives.
| neilv wrote:
| We _need_ a trustworthy Web browser. There isn 't one. And
| such a massive complexity moat has been created with de
| facto standards, and also made a moving target, that some
| nice programmer's temporary hobby project isn't a viable
| solution.
| orangepanda wrote:
| The illusion of mozilla having any privacy principles collapsed
| for me on May 2019 when they required users to enable telemetry
| to allow using adblock and tracking blocking extensions.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Clickbait title. I have read what is linked there and it claims
| no such thing.
|
| At best, if you read through the notices, input data can be used
| to train personalised AI chatbots (running locally) IF you give
| your consent at the time of activation.
|
| There's a lot of vitriol in the comments below but nobody seems
| to have read what is linked here.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Secondly, text typed into the search/address bar is sent to
| them for "suggestions" and to broadly categorize the search
| ("travel"). Turn this off if you don't want it.
|
| Thirdly, they'll be notified if you click an advert on the new
| tab page. Again, this can be turned off
| mort96 wrote:
| The only inaccuracy in the title is that it used the word
| "owns" as short-hand for "gets a broad license to use". Which
| isn't unheard of: we talk about owning a copy of a piece of
| software or music for example even though what we have is a
| perpetual and broad license to use it.
|
| I wish the title didn't use such hyperbole, but it's closer to
| true than to false.
|
| > 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.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It'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... :/
| createaccount99 wrote:
| 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 Google's core business
| model.
|
| And "Chrome works marginally better"? By what metric? Firefox
| has better memory usage, stronger privacy protections, and
| doesn't exist primarily as a data collection tool for the
| world's largest advertising company.
|
| The idea that you'd "happily buy Firefox" misses the point of
| Mozilla's mission for an open web. This kind of uninformed take
| that ignores the nuances of browser economics is exactly why we
| can't have nice things on the open web.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| > "Chrome works marginally better"
|
| Performance, compatibility, security. Chromium runs faster,
| it works with more websites, it's sandbox is better,
| particularly on Android. I don't care much about memory usage
| as I don't need a billion tabs open at once (does anyone).
| There's options available beyond Chrome that offer most of
| the same privacy benefits as Firefox does.
|
| I think marginal is an understatement. As for Mozilla's
| business model, what business model? They're throwing
| everything at the wall to see if it sticks and virtually
| nothing has, all the while their browser has languished.
| Going full cynic, at this point the only reason it is allowed
| to exist is because Google deem it useful to have it around
| as a counterpoint to accusations that they have a monopoly.
| Sharlin wrote:
| > (does anyone)
|
| Oh yes. And you don't even need _that_ many tabs open for
| Chrome to eat half of your RAM.
| vntok wrote:
| RAM is supposed to be used. "Saving" it doesn't bring any
| value, it's actually just waste.
| unaindz wrote:
| That's true, until another program needs ram and crashes
| because chrome is hoarding it all
| chillingeffect wrote:
| Ive run chromium and firefox side by side for years to
| isolate personal from work. The only noticeable
| difference is Chromium crashes when it uses all the
| memory.
|
| People's overwhelming fascination with Chrome escapes me.
| Some subtle detail seems to make it stick out. Everyone
| remembers that one time ff crashed on 2005, but gives
| berth to Chrome crashimg every few days and selling their
| personal data to google.
|
| I dont care if ddg and ff sell aggregate data.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Fewer than 100 will massively pig out memory, on Android,
| Linux, and MacOS, for Chrome, IME.
|
| My main FF instance has ~1,500 tabs FWIW, though I'll
| often bypass those for a given session by running
| incognito only. Even then I'll easily hit 100+ tabs in
| only a few minutes.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| There's a cool feature web browsers have called
| "bookmarks"
| tucnak wrote:
| > 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 that can benefit from
| "open web" cooperation courtesy of Nodejs and the vast
| ecosystem around it. SpiderMonkey? Please. This is the crux
| of the issue.
|
| > The idea that you'd "happily buy Firefox" misses the point
| of Mozilla's mission for an open web.
|
| The idea that the web--chaperoned by the likes of Mozilla,
| can be "open"--is the crazy, unsustainable one. OP is being
| pragmatic, and considering their privacy carefully. Mozilla's
| track record is that of a gravely mismanaged, disoriented,
| and subservient (Google) organisation. Firefox codebase is
| arcane, was already showing age even ten years ago, & now
| there's a whole ecosystem of Chromium-based browsers that can
| benefit from "open web" cooperation.
|
| Firefox has zero moral high-ground, & pretending like it
| possesses some kind of virtue is a crime against semantics.
| t43562 wrote:
| 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.
| tucnak wrote:
| Everything is a monoculture if you squint hard enough.
| dogleash wrote:
| _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 the bread is vegetarian and there's way more
| meat in a Big Mac.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30715947
| alt227 wrote:
| If only people cared as much about privacy as vegetarians
| do about not eating meat...
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > 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%).
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| 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 far as I can see, is not the the
| compromises they make for obtaining money (everyone suffers
| that), its that they're deceptive and underhand about it. That
| makes them unethical. I wrote plenty regarding that here [0]
|
| [0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/you-are-too-dumb-for-tech/
| baobun wrote:
| 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.
| KingMob wrote:
| The problem with these privacy-first Firefox forks is none
| have the resources to match FF.
|
| If Firefox dies, eventually so will they, as the code
| stagnates relative to better-funded browsers.
|
| Saying "switch to a privacy-first fork" is not a long-term
| solution.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Saying "switch to a privacy-first fork" is not a long-
| term solution.
|
| You're 100% right while operating in an environment that is
| hostile to privacy. In these conditions security/privacy
| remains mostly tactical, not strategic. In fact, against a
| predominant tyranny it is insurrectional. Free Software
| will have to learn to adapt with more intelligence-sharing
| and opportunistic manoeuvres.
|
| As an aside though, one might generalise to say there are
| _no_ long term solutions in tech, period. And therefore
| advocates of freedom and privacy are at no particular
| disadvantage relative to any opponents.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The internet doesn't actually need any more new features
| anyway, and most sites reflect this and just serve HTML.
|
| Some sites will need new features. But I guess it is fine
| to have a data-collecting version of Firefox or even some
| moderately well behaved malware like Chrome, as long as
| most browsing doesn't happen through it. So, I guess I'll
| look at moving most of my browsing to a privacy respecting
| form and keeping the a browser around for faulty sites...
| bluGill wrote:
| Anyone can fork. However you need to keep your fork updated
| as firefox does new releases which means repeating that work
| often. Either that you are need to support all the security
| fixes yourself.
| drusepth wrote:
| I would wager most people that offer to buy software "one off"
| typically underestimate their lifetime worth earned through
| other means like ads and data sales.
|
| Would you pay a one-time $10 for a lifetime Firefox license?
| $100? $1,000? $10,000?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Without thinking much about it, $60 / yr seems reasonable to
| me.
|
| I never click on any ads, so while I'm sure I contribute to
| Firefox's revenue as another pair of eyeballs, I don't
| deliver any end value to their ad-biz end customers.
| bluGill wrote:
| > I never click on any ads [snip] I don't deliver any end
| value to their ad-biz end customers
|
| This is a complete misunderstanding of the value of ads.
| Clicks are of course the most valuable signal, but any ad
| seen is valuable. If clicks were all that mattered TV would
| never had ads, nor would newspapers.
|
| Many ads are about awareness not buy now. Ford/Toyota...
| doesn't expect you to buy a car the day/week you see an ad,
| they just want you to think of them when you buy a car.
| They also want to slowly drive discomfort with whatever car
| you already drive so that eventually you do buy a new one
| despite having on that works. (or if you don't have a car
| they want to be sure you are reminded how much freedom to
| go places you are giving up - without concern for the costs
| of having a car)
| closewith wrote:
| Last time I checked, Mozilla's ARPU was less than $5 pa. I
| think many of us would pay a multiple of that per annum _iff_
| it went towards Firefox and not whatever project/cause of the
| week that Mozilla has undertaken.
| bad_user wrote:
| You're overestimating people's willingness to pay for
| software when free and arguably better alternatives are
| available. Preferring Firefox to free Chromium alternatives
| requires a level of nuance and tech literacy that most
| people will never have, and even with that tech literacy,
| people may still prefer Chromium.
|
| You're basically talking about asking for donations from
| people that prefer to ad-block YouTube instead of paying
| for Premium.
| sph wrote:
| You are forgetting that Firefox has been around until now
| with no profit except Google's bribe.
|
| They could've at least tried to sell a paid version -
| what's the worst that could happen? Any sale would be on
| top of what they're currently earning per download, i.e.
| pure "profit" that could be reinvested in the product.
|
| It never was an "either/or" proposition.
| bad_user wrote:
| They did try some extra services, such as VPN or Pocket.
| I think at this point a Pocket subscription is how one
| can fund Firefox.
|
| But indeed, even if they ensure that donations go towards
| Firefox development, instead of other crap, that would be
| a step forward.
| closewith wrote:
| Pocket and the other Mozilla services fund Mozilla, not
| Firefox directly. My company uses Firefox professionally
| and we'd buy per-seat enterprise licences if they
| existed, iff they funded Firefox development.
|
| We have no interest in funding Mozilla, whose manifesto
| barely mentions Firefox and who has now decided that AI
| is their focus.
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/about/manifesto/details/
| drusepth wrote:
| > They could've at least tried to sell a paid version -
| what's the worst that could happen? Any sale would be on
| top of what they're currently earning per download, i.e.
| pure "profit" that could be reinvested in the product.
|
| Assumedly, a paid version would exclude some features
| that Mozilla is otherwise monetizing through (like
| selling your data). This doesn't seem like sales "on top
| of" what they're already earning, but rather an
| alternative that replaces (at least some of) existing
| monetization routes.
| 34679 wrote:
| Kagi, a search engine with countless free alternatives,
| starts at $5/month.
|
| The people who care are willing to pay.
| bluGill wrote:
| Is Kagi making money? I know they exist, but are they
| paying their own bills or living off of investors. (I
| couldn't find a direct statement, but their timeline
| implies they could be)
| closewith wrote:
| Today, who knows. However they were profitable in May
| 2024: https://blog.kagi.com/what-is-next-for-
| kagi#:~:text=We%20are...
| homebrewer wrote:
| Have you not heard about how successful Thunderbird's
| funding campaign had been? The reasons as I see them are
| simple: they ask for money directly, and use it for
| developing a good email client, not for fighting the
| boogeyman of the week (and/or chasing the latest fad).
| GTP wrote:
| > Preferring Firefox to free Chromium alternatives
| requires a level of nuance and tech literacy that most
| people will never have
|
| I think it's already the case that only tech literate
| people prefer Firefox over Chrome or Edge (I bet a
| significant part of users don't even know about Chromium
| or what's the difference from Chrome). So putting a price
| on Firefox wouldn't change this in a meaningful way. The
| real question is how much tech literate people would be
| ready to pay, most of the users will stay on Chrome/Edge
| for the foreseeable future.
| drusepth wrote:
| ARPU isn't a great metric here since it's revenue averaged
| across all users. In my experience, the vast majority of
| free software users sit _below_ ARPU and are hoisted up by
| whales -- who are also the main reason one-off pricing like
| this doesn 't typically exist: Mozilla would be fine if
| _most_ users just paid ARPU (in fact, they 'd probably make
| a slight profit if they could get a higher-than-industry-
| average free->paid conversion rate...), but they'd quickly
| lose their cash cows when their whales suddenly _only_ paid
| ARPU instead of the 10x, 100x, 1000x, etc they already
| "pay".
| mppm wrote:
| This logic applies more to Google than Mozilla. Their mission
| is (or ought to be) to cover development and hosting costs
| associated with Firefox, _not_ to milk users for all they are
| worth on the ad market.
| amelius wrote:
| > presumably they want to sell data to pay the bills.
|
| Can't the EU just sponsor Firefox?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| That's the surest way to kill it, and that is before taking
| their recent anti-privacy policies into consideration.
| socksy wrote:
| That feels like a witty thing to say without much basis in
| reality. If the EU got their act together and gave Firefox
| funding, it would be more of a pain in the neck for them to
| stop doing that than it would for them to threaten Mozilla
| over e.g. anti privacy policies. Even Germany, a single
| nation with a lot less difficulty in passing laws, hasn't
| used their Sovereign Tech Fund (https://sovereign.tech) in
| such a manner.
|
| And even if they did, it would have to be a world in which
| they've lost all funding from Google and becoming dependent
| only on the EU. Perhaps such a thing might happen, but it
| wouldn't happen overnight -- in the meantime it would be
| more money, from more diversified sources.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Ok, let's dive into the details:
|
| 1) The European Commission has proposed Chat Control,
| pressuring platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram to scan
| encrypted messages with AI, including client-side
| scanning, which critics say breaks encryption and enables
| mass surveillance.
|
| 2) The EU has adopted the eID (European Digital
| Identity), a centralized digital ID system via a "wallet"
| app, tied to biometric and personal data for service
| access.
|
| 3) The EU's Data Retention Directive forced telecoms to
| store metadata until it was struck down in 2014; debates
| still persist.
|
| 4) The EU's Digital Services Act mandates platforms share
| data with authorities to fight illegal content, raising
| profiling concerns.
|
| 5) The EU's Data Act requires businesses to share data
| with governments, threatening personal info control.
|
| 6) The EU supports the UN Cybercrime Treaty, boosting
| global surveillance and data-sharing powers.
|
| That's just off the top of my head; I'm sure there are
| more examples of how the EU abuses its power and
| infringes on users' privacy.
|
| So yes, of all possible stewards for Firefox, the EU is
| maybe the _third-worst,_ behind only China and Putin's
| Russia.
| geomark wrote:
| Ask HN: Is Brave an ok alternative?
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| 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.
| Tepix wrote:
| The Youtube adblock always works
| EndShell wrote:
| 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.
| sksrbWgbfK wrote:
| > can be done quite easily
|
| The first and last time I tried Brave, it was injecting
| links (with a pretty golden picture) in each post of reddit
| (and I'm not talking about changing the referrals). To turn
| that off I had to look deep into the settings.
| EndShell wrote:
| I've not seen it do that personally and I've been using
| Brave for a number of years now. Not saying that it
| hasn't happened either.
| _mitterpach wrote:
| Depends, but with this news you will probably not be
| downgrading too much.
|
| Brave really does have a bunch of very nice features, I
| particularly enjoyed using them on my phone to download videos
| from youtube for online listening. Built-in adblocking is very
| enjoyable too.
|
| Do note that there had been several smaller controversies,
| including one that 'Honey' got recently into hot water for,
| which was replacing affiliate links with their own. There is
| currently an on-going lawsuit with Honey for this.
|
| In honesty, look at the controversies page on wikipedia and
| decide for yourself, I don't think there is a good or a bad
| choice here.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers...
| orng wrote:
| In my opinion, if you care about the open web, then you should
| not be using a Blink (Chromium) based browser like Brave. The
| less control Google has, the better for the web.
| rs186 wrote:
| Well that ship has sailed.
| orng wrote:
| The internet used to be controlled in large by Microsoft.
| Then it wasn't. It does not have to continue to be
| controlled by Google in the future. Not using Chromium
| based browsers is a first step.
| EndShell wrote:
| I use it. Turning off the ads and annoyances can be done in
| literally 20 seconds. It has uBlock Origin built in and removes
| the cookie modal popups.
|
| It has a nice sync feature so my bookmarks / extensions are
| sync'd. The developer tools are exactly the same as Chromes.
|
| It has some controversies in the past, but generally it has
| been ok IMO.
| andirk wrote:
| Brave is my favorite so far. You can run an HTTP monitor like
| Charles Proxy or Fiddler in your OS if you think your browser
| is snooping on you. I do Brave + Ghostery and works great.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| How much of a financial effort would it be to have some non-
| profit take a fork of Icecat and Fennec F-Droid, and just
| maintain a browser for the actual free world (akin to codeberg
| for example)?
|
| i.e. if we strip down all the corporate overhead what would be
| the annual cost of maintaining a European sane version of 'land
| of the free' Firefox?
| corv wrote:
| Adieu Mozilla!
| pmontra wrote:
| > When you upload or input information through Firefox, you
| hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license
| to use that information,
|
| Taken literally it means that when I use Firefox to upload a file
| to a customer's web site Mozilla is getting that file too, which
| does not seem likely. They could get a copy of the text I'm
| typing right now in Firefox or it means that the browser could do
| some local processing on those data. But if the results of that
| processing would stay local why would they ask the permission?
| It's not that emacs, vim, grep, sed, awk etc have to ask me the
| permission to use the information I'm inputting into them. So
| they are definitely sending information back home or they plan to
| do it.
|
| The point becomes how to block any calls from Firefox to Mozilla.
| Note that don't have a Firefox account because I never trusted
| that the data in transit from them would stay private. I'm not
| logged in into Google as well. Maybe I have to finally install a
| Pi Hole and route all my traffic through it. Hopefully Blockada
| will take care of that for my Android devices.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| 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, therefore
| Mozilla have to establish that if you use them to upload a file
| that you are granting them the legal right to publish that
| file. It has to be worldwide because you may be uploading to
| anywhere in the world.
| Zak wrote:
| Perhaps the legal situation is different somewhere, but I
| would think the browser isn't _acting_ at all. It has no
| agency; it 's just software running on my computer, following
| instructions I give it. Mozilla has no agency in that
| situation either; the software is running on _my_ computer,
| not theirs.
|
| The new terms grant _Mozilla_ , the corporation a license to
| do things with my data.
| bluGill wrote:
| The question isn't what you (who presumably understands
| technology) would think. The question is what every court
| in the world would think.
| tgv wrote:
| But the more important question then is: what else will
| the courts think this language allows? Probably Mozilla
| could argue they need to store those uploads and analyze
| them under those conditions.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| My comments above are based on precedence when sites like
| Facebook added these clauses and people got all panicked
| thinking the company was going to start selling their
| content (rather than selling their souls /s). The mundane
| truth was that they needed the wording to make sure they
| were legally given the right to publish the content onto
| the web in the way they did. So people were assuming
| nefarious reasons when they were just legally protecting
| themselves.
|
| Now, it does seem strange that Mozilla have suddenly added
| this when they haven't had it previously. Personally, I
| deem it highly unlikely that they are planning on
| monetizing our content in some way; whilst they have made
| some strange decisions sometimes I don't think they are
| completely stupid. Mozilla is in a precarious position
| right now, they are only managing to scape by on user trust
| and if that disappears they are finished. I'd like to think
| they are not foolish enough to do something that would
| catastrophically erode that trust, and selling user data to
| advertisers would kill them.
|
| Having thought about it a bit more now, I have to wonder if
| they have dreamt up some other mad scheme, like Mozilla
| Cloud Storage, or something that would require such wording
| in the terms. Hopefully, it's just a wording update to
| protect themselves. I guess we will find out in due course.
|
| [edit: fixed a typo.]
| Zak wrote:
| I think it's likely they're planning to more deeply
| integrate some sort of cloud services, perhaps with a
| paid tier. I don't want _that_ either; stuff like that is
| fine as an optional extra, but problematic when joined at
| the hip to a browser.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| By such logic, operating systems would need a disclaimer like
| this, as would keyboards, screens, etc.
| imiric wrote:
| > 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 liable for the contents of the file
| any more than any other web client. If it did, tools like
| cURL should be liable in the same way.
|
| Somewhere along the way web browser authors forgot that
| they're merely building a web user _agent_. It's a tool that
| acts _on behalf of_ the user, in order to help them access
| the web in a friendly way. It should in no way be aware of
| the content the user sends and receives, have a say in
| matters regarding this content, and let alone share that
| information with 3rd parties. It's an outrageous invasion of
| privacy to do otherwise.
| glenstein wrote:
| >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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They could restrict the language to that specific legal
| situation, couldn't they?
| Macha wrote:
| So why doesn't my backpack come with a mandatory TOS that I
| won't e.g. put illegal drugs in it and bring it across the
| border? Why is Firefox any more liable if I used it to
| publish illegal content on the web than the backpack
| manufacturer would be if I used it to smuggle illegal content
| across a border?
| bluGill wrote:
| Because the legal system around backpacks are better
| understood. The more common something is the less legal
| paperwork there is. Judges understand backpacks and have
| for hundreds of years. Many judges don't understand
| technology. As a result when selling a backpack you can
| rely on the court's understanding and thus not have to
| account for every possibility. Meanwhile because the court
| might not understand technology you have to account for
| every possible trivial thing.
| catsma21 wrote:
| for example - app that downloaded entered urls, something
| even simpler than a browser, hit with copyright takedown
| in 2023: https://torrentfreak.com/google-bans-downloader-
| app-tv-outfi...
| Macha wrote:
| I don't think a TOS would have helped you with Google's
| shoot first, ask questions later takedown policy.
| pmontra wrote:
| > the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file
|
| If that's all is required to be a publisher then ftp, scp,
| rsync and hundreds of similar tools are also publishers of
| the files they transfer. However they don't have Terms of
| Service like the one Mozilla is giving to Firefox.
| bee_rider wrote:
| That's interesting, do you know of any cases that were
| decided on that basis? It seems downright ridiculous but then
| the legal system is pretty dumb, so...
| alt227 wrote:
| As the browser runs locally on our machine, surely its possible
| to just block firefox phoning home by DNS black holes or even
| hosts file or something?
| vntok wrote:
| That's exactly what Firefox originally claimed was a stark
| difference compared to Chrome: "use us and you can finally be
| safe and not need to play cat and mouse anymore"
| lupusreal wrote:
| At this point my trust in Mozilla is so low that I could
| _almost_ believe they intent to run the text I download and
| upload through an LLM nanny that can scold or ban me if
| anything offends its Californian sensibilities.
|
| > _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._
|
| > _You may not use any of Mozilla's services to [...]_
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/
| Timwi wrote:
| "Californian"??...
| lupusreal wrote:
| Call it what you like, "San Francisco techy", ""woke"" if
| you like trendy pejoratives, whatever. I don't care what
| you want to call it but I won't play along if you intend to
| say that regional value system is actually uniformly
| embraced across this country, let alone across the same
| globe Firefox users are spread across.
|
| In the social sphere Mozilla resides in, voting for a
| socially conservative political party makes you a fascist
| which puts you at odds with Mozilla's acceptable use policy
| if you talk about your politics using Firefox. If Firefox
| users are supposed to be bound by that document, as judged
| by Mozilla, that's a problem.
| grayhatter wrote:
| Not everything in the world is about political party your
| circle disagrees with. Given trends I'm sure Firefox will
| do something stupid like you're afraid of in short order.
| But this isnt that, so until then you should save your
| manufactured culture war fear mongering.
|
| sigh, I feel bad for you... and us Californian techys...
| this us vs them toxicity is so demoralizing
| homebrewer wrote:
| Not everything is, but Mozilla specifically has been more
| loud in its support of various political causes most of
| the world has no interest in than in developing a good
| web browser for about a decade now, so GP's reaction
| seems quite appropriate in this case.
| PTGreat wrote:
| Obligatory GDPR post.
|
| Data of UK and EU users is protected. Why doesn't the USA have
| such sensible data protection laws; the only hostility I see is
| from surveillance capitalists spreading their FUD.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Haven't you heard? Protecting liberty is against freedom. Ask
| Mr. Vance about it. /s
| captainbland wrote:
| Did you not see all the surveillance capitalists at the
| inauguration?
| LightHugger wrote:
| I suppose the main target here is to sell firefox sync bookmark
| and history data?
|
| It is possible to host your own firefox sync instance but it's
| too much work. I hope it gets easier with these announcements
| lighting a fire under people.
| Tepix wrote:
| if i want to block data collection by Mozilla, what do i
| configure in pi-hole?
| INTPenis wrote:
| I've been using Mozilla since the browser was literally called
| Mozilla, and I remain loyal simply because I don't think we
| should fragment the ecosystem. One company focusing its
| development resources is a lot better than 3 open source
| projects.
|
| But fact is that Mozilla is effing up big time. They remain in
| the bay area where developers are paid super high salaries when
| they should be a 100% remote company. They have bugs and issues
| decades old. They keep flirting with big business.
|
| They are also our last big corporate hope against the
| enshittification of the web.
| caseyy wrote:
| It's all just part of Mozilla's ebb and flow. Give it until
| 2027. They will have lost all community support and be trailing
| in many browser metrics. And then they'll do something that
| once again builds them a niche of devoted fans.
|
| It has happened before. And before that, and before that.
| nbzso wrote:
| Apple removed encryption for iCloud users in UK. I don't see the
| outrage on HN why?
| coaksford wrote:
| Because you're looking at a thread about Mozilla, the outrage
| is in the threads about Apple removing ADP for iCloud users in
| the UK.
| nbzso wrote:
| Yes. Thank you.:)
| windward wrote:
| It got _1700_ points.
| alt227 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43128253
| procaryote wrote:
| Misleading framing.
|
| Apple removed encryption for iCloud users in the UK rather than
| pretending to keep it while giving the UK a backdoor.
|
| In this, Apple was the good guy and the UK the bad actor.
| nico42 wrote:
| To Mozilla: if your intentions are indeed good as you claim in
| your post[1], then update the ToS accordingly.
|
| Chrome is removing uBlock origin, I and probably a lot of other
| users saw this as a good moment to promote Firefox to our
| relatives, you are missing a chance and alienating your user base
| here.
|
| [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-
| news/fi...
| walrus01 wrote:
| Based on this, Firefox has a 2.54% market share of browsers
| worldwide, so if their goal here is to shoot themselves in the
| foot and get that number under 2%, mission accomplished.
|
| Firefox is _still_ the lesser of two evils when compared to
| Chrome with all of its telemetry turned on. And at least it
| supports a proper implementation of uBlock origin, which Google
| just broke in Chrome.
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
|
| previous discussion from mid 2023 on low firefox market share:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36759162
| m2f2 wrote:
| I'm one of them 2.54% and I cringe when some kiddie develops
| websites around some chrome bugs, just to let us and Apple
| folks down.
| ta1243 wrote:
| I'm also the 2.54% and have been since the phoenix days. I
| am beyond thankful every day for apple keeping both desktop
| safari and ios running to prevent the internet being even
| more monoculture than in the IE6 days
| weikju wrote:
| > I am beyond thankful every day for apple keeping both
| desktop safari and ios running to prevent the internet
| being even more monoculture than in the IE6 days
|
| Don't worry, EU regulators (and other countries soon I
| suppose) are doing their best to fix that "bug".
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Users sticking with Safari because it is the browser by
| default on iOS and macOS and they don't know any better
| isn't some sort of moral victory for privacy. (I notice
| that Apple has only recently been putting out TV ads
| praising their browser.) It's almost like privacy through
| obscurity. And it's like thanking Samsung for
| accidentally pushing against Chrome dominance on Android
| by forcing users to use Samsung Internet by default. Or
| thanking Microsoft for bundling Edge with Windows.
|
| Users generally don't know about Chrome's privacy issues
| or what browser engines are. Apple simply hasn't done
| enough to promote Safari and keep it a strong competitor
| against Chrome. Relying on their monopoly over their
| platform is them accidentally doing something good in the
| wrong way. You know why Chrome attracted so many
| customers when it first launched in 2008 or so? Because
| IE, and yes Firefox, were incredibly bloated and slow.
| Apple hasn't presented a similar performance jump or
| another compelling reason for Safari over Chrome. And in
| open-source land, so many hotshot alt-browsers from Arc
| to Brave all use Blink. Orion uses WebKit, and it's the
| only one. Apple clearly doesn't care to promote it as a
| Blink alternative other than for their monopolistic
| mandate of WebKit on iOS.
|
| Not to mention, they killed Safari for Windows. Apple
| apparently doesn't care about privacy as much as HN
| thinks they do, see mini-thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39975620
|
| Finally, the EU change should in theory be liberating for
| Mozilla, who can now provide a proper mobile Firefox for
| iOS that uses Gecko. Instead, from what I hear that isn't
| even on the roadmap, because this is the state of modern
| Mozilla. Here's hoping that Zen will instead bring Gecko
| to iOS.
| ta1243 wrote:
| It's not a moral victory, it is a pragmatic one.
|
| If it was 98% chrome and 2% firefox that's basically 100%
| chrome.
|
| Instead safari on ios (and to a lesser extent desktop)
| means the web isn't 100% chrome (or chrome skins like
| brave)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I'm arguing that Apple should strengthen Safari (and not
| just on iOS and macOS but to other operating systems
| owned by them) to make it more compelling to use for
| customers, and not rely on App Store guideline lock-in on
| iOS. But they clearly don't care to, even when they could
| afford to. And they don't care about promoting WebKit at
| all, because any alt-browsers running it would just
| provide competition for Safari anyway. As it stands it
| all seems very half-hearted and kind of lazy.
|
| "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the
| right deed for the wrong reason."
|
| - T.S Eliot, _Murder in the Cathedral_
| olyjohn wrote:
| Having a good web browser doesn't sell apps. That's why
| they don't care about it. They would rather you not have
| one at all and only have access to things via apps.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Precisely, and it's quite ironic given Steve Jobs'
| original envisioning iOS as chiefly relying on web apps.
| The App Store mandate of banning non-WebKit browsers is
| entirely technical in nature and self-serving; to prevent
| apps from including third-party JIT compilers[0], and
| maybe (like Flash was) other browser engines are viewed
| as unoptimized and insecure for the platform. It's
| doubtful that Apple actually cares about preventing
| Chrome's takeover of the web. This is not the guardian
| you are looking for.
|
| [0] _iOS Application Security: The Definitive Guide for
| Hackers and Developers_ by David Thiel, pg. 8-9
|
| "Jailed Just-in-Time Compilation on iOS" by Saagar Jha
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401146
| mattl wrote:
| > And they don't care about promoting WebKit at all,
| because any alt-browsers running it would just provide
| competition for Safari anyway.
|
| Check out webkit.org:
|
| https://www.webkit.org/downloads/
|
| Browsers for Linux are right there.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Sure, because KHTML and the Epiphany project predate
| Safari. Gotta mention it for legacy reasons.
| mattl wrote:
| GNOME Web (formerly Epiphany) switched from Gecko to
| WebKit in 2008, long after Safari was around.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Alright, that's fair. I was going to say "Well, that's
| just because there's no such thing as Safari for Linux"
| but at this point I'm somewhat losing the plot. I suppose
| ultimately it seems like Apple just cares about Safari
| for its own platforms and if others happen to use WebKit,
| that's nice but they don't care, it's not like they're
| seeking to impact the web like Google does.
|
| For all of Apple's contributions for WebKit, you don't
| exactly see them doing something like this:
|
| "Supporters of Chromium-based Browsers"
| https://blog.chromium.org/2025/01/announcing-supporters-
| of-c...
|
| Huh. That WebKit site links to a Mastodon account that
| doesn't even say anything. Maybe it's for queries.
|
| https://front-end.social/@webkit
| mattl wrote:
| WebKit has this: https://webkit.org/team/
|
| https://www.igalia.com seems to the other major
| contributor. Sony is in there a little too.
|
| https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/Companies%20and%20Organizati
| ons... too but that's 12 years out of date.
|
| I would love to see a WebKit browser for Windows that's
| released, but
| https://docs.webkit.org/Ports/WindowsPort.html does exist
| too.
|
| As for the Mastodon link, I'd ask https://front-
| end.social/@jensimmons
| lost_womble wrote:
| This is such a bad way to look at Firefox browser share.
| Instead, look at desktop share worldwide, where it's more
| like 7%.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Why is it a bad way to look at it? If anything, I'd argue
| Firefox is more compelling on Android than desktop.
| stateoff wrote:
| Absolutely agree. The blog post is claiming the opposite to
| what their ToS is granting - but one is fluff (that will be
| forgotten soon) while the other is legally binding. I cannot
| imagine applications like browsers that would require such an
| unrestricted license for user input just to do its service.
| That clearly indicates some "other" future motive that is
| underlined by the notion to remove the FAQ entry and other past
| actions towards an advertising future at Mozilla.
|
| Am looking forward to explore some of the alternatives. And no,
| I don't want a just a correcting/updating/informing follow-up
| blog post of how we the users got it all wrong. In fact, the
| current UPDATE makes it worse:
|
| "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."
|
| vs. the ToS:
|
| "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."
|
| No - you don't need a license for my input. Just pass the
| butter, it's not your job to "use that information" in any way,
| form or shape. How did you survive 26 years without any license
| to our input? What did legally change that would require that
| license? No one asked you to: "We use data to make Firefox
| functional and sustainable, improve your experience, and keep
| you safe." (from the blog). What does that even mean? If you
| have specific use-cases in mind state them clearly, instead of
| this overreaching general license, that may or may not be
| misused now or in future. As of this ToS you may very sell my
| data to AI companies to "help me navigate the internet" which
| is not even part of the Privacy Notice protection.
|
| Reinstatement your privacy guarantees in the ToS and be
| transparent about explicit use-cases.
|
| Meanwhile, so long, and thanks for all the fish.
| flir wrote:
| I haven't read the article. All I know is, Firefox changed
| their TOS.
|
| > That clearly indicates some "other" future motive
|
| It's training data, isn't it?
|
| (It's always training data).
| stateoff wrote:
| I was referring to Mozilla's past investment into
| advertising: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-
| anonym-raising-t...
|
| To me that and the new ToS add up, why else would they
| remove the FAQ entry.
| flir wrote:
| Totally fair, tbh. Stealing data for that purpose has
| already been normalized, so it's a much easier sell.
| bluGill wrote:
| The blog does come from company officials and so you can show
| it to a judge and state "this is how you should interpret
| their ToS". It will be harder than if the ToS was clear, but
| the judge on seeing the ToS and blog differ is likely to come
| down hard to Mozilla for creating this situation. But you
| also need a good (expensive) lawyer to pull this off.
| Delk wrote:
| > How did you survive 26 years without any license to our
| input?
|
| Might be a case of covering their asses in the context of
| services they provide for search suggestions etc. Those are
| not mere programs users run on their own devices, and they
| rather make use of services run by Mozilla, which probably
| leads to their lawyers to seeing the need for legally
| covering Mozilla ass.
|
| A less charitable interpretation is that they actually want
| to introduce terms for using the software itself, in a way
| that conflicts with the no-nonsense "no restrictions on use"
| approach of open source, and thus ignoring open source
| principles in preference for covering their asses against
| hypothetical risks, while somehow still trying to look like
| open source.
|
| In any case I agree the blog post or the update don't make
| anything better. I don't think the post says anything
| substantial about the terms of use or their introduction. It
| doesn't, in concrete terms, clarify anything about the
| seeming conflict between the introduction of terms of use and
| the commonly accepted definition of open source (which
| includes no restrictions on use). The post rather seems like
| a classic case of trying to make things better with nice-
| sounding words rather than owning up and actually clarifying
| any ambiguity.
| evertedsphere wrote:
| > Finally, you are in control. We've set responsible defaults
| that you can review during onboarding or adjust in your
| settings at any time: These simple, yet powerful tools let you
| manage your data the way you want.
|
| "simple yet powerful tools" (derogatory) is how i would
| describe the windows popup that gives you the choice between
| setting up a microsoft account now or being nagged about it
| later
| bee_rider wrote:
| '"Simple yet powerful tools" (derogatory)' is my new favorite
| phrase I think. It seems like it has wide applications
| outside tech as well.
| dk1138 wrote:
| Or they are taking the gamble that being able to continue to
| use uBlock outweighs the sale of customer data.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| The only surprise here is that people are surprised by this.
| Mozilla is an advertising company, since almost a year ago.
| zihotki wrote:
| Fully agree, here is a context for those who missed it
| https://www.adexchanger.com/privacy/mozilla-acquires-anonym-...
| boesboes wrote:
| My god people, what a nothing burger. Try clicking the link and
| reading the actual terms:
|
| > 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.
|
| Most of the comments here are in bad faith or just people jumping
| on the hype train. Sad.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Time to switch: https://librewolf.net/
| ac130kz wrote:
| 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.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| Which decisions? LibreWolf ist exactly that + hardening used
| in tor browser maybe you mean those but all of them you can
| change in setting.
| ac130kz wrote:
| Like I need to watch DRM for my job, and it doesn't work at
| all. I also already ported most of their configs that I
| actually researched each and every line of myself +
| Waterfox + Arkenfox's configs into my generic Mozilla
| Firefox, and it works great.
| Propelloni wrote:
| If you think Librewolf is too opinionated, try Waterfox [1]
|
| [1] https://github.com/BrowserWorks/Waterfox
| ac130kz wrote:
| Waterfox seemed a bit too opinionated as well, especially
| in terms of extra code, weird versioning, patch delays.
| KingMob wrote:
| These FF forks will all be nonviable within a few years of
| Mozilla going under. Google and Apple will keep moving the web
| (for better or worse), and these forks will be unable to keep
| up for lack of resources.
|
| Whether they get relatively slower, or just can't support some
| new web tech, the writing will be on the wall.
| vntok wrote:
| "A few years" is at least 10 years, though. That's a lot of
| time to pivot or get morally sounder funding sources (users
| for example).
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Okay, 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
| abusive.
|
| I feel like the internet needs a tracker of moral failings of
| companies/organizations like this, it's still too easy for
| something like this to slip through and not reach sufficient
| publicity to affect public opinion and therefore action. They
| need to be held to the highest account, openly, publicly, and
| brutally shamed, ostracized and sued if necessary. If they fail
| and exploit the rights of individuals, mishandle the "implicit
| consent"/trust of their users, at their scale, they fail and
| exploit collective humanity.
|
| One may argue this is a non-issue due to the freedom of contract
| - and people can just choose to use whatever they want - but who
| among us has such a continuous legal awareness of all the
| software they use to be able to switch whenever needed due to
| some software enshittifying?
|
| My only hope may still lie in software managed by legally
| codified (truly) non-profit organizations. Lichess and the
| Blender Foundation are led by people who have held to their word,
| and made the world better for it.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| https://librewolf.net/
| MrAlex94 wrote:
| 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.
|
| On one hand, they're finally implementing features users have
| been clamouring for ages (tab groups, vertical tabs and the
| likes) - on the other, rather odd policy choices.
|
| I should point out, it seems daft to me when others suggest using
| forks with no well-established governance of their own,
| essentially shifting trust from an organisation at least
| answerable to certain regulations, to individuals with no proper
| framework or guidelines.
|
| I've done my best with Waterfox over the years to have it
| represented by a proper legal entity with policies to follow; so
| if anyone is interested take a look.
|
| Edit: FWIW I've written some more thoughts on it here:
| https://www.waterfox.net/blog/a-comment-on-mozilla-changes/
| Propelloni wrote:
| Hey, thank you for Waterfox! I'm using it _a lot_ across all my
| machines. Well done!
| jchw wrote:
| Most of the other "forks" (e.g. Librewolf) are just patches on
| top of vanilla Firefox sources, so it's really not a whole lot
| to scrutinize by hand. I've skimmed at least most of the patch
| files personally just out of curiosity. In my distro of choice,
| NixOS, the sources are built by Hydra or my local machine, so
| I'm not trusting that their binaries match the source either.
|
| That makes it a bit easier to trust, but it does run into the
| issue that it stops working if Mozilla hits a certain level of
| untrustworthiness.
| dmantis wrote:
| I don't see how a regulated entity is better in any way than an
| individual.
|
| We repeatedly see attacks on freedom and privacy by the people
| who are supposed to protect them, those so-called "regulators":
| chatcontrol, recent UK backdoor wishes, repeated French
| proposals to enforce DRM even on opensource. And I wouldn't
| even google Russia, China, or other less democratic states.
|
| Regulated is probably worse than some anarchistic who-knows-by-
| whom software, but FOSS and auditable these days, tbh.
| Especially as everyone's audit capabilities grow day by day
| with AI. It's kind of good at grinding tons of code.
|
| A heavily regulated entity with all licenses in the world might
| be more hostile toward users than some niche project.
| MrAlex94 wrote:
| > I don't see how regulated entity is better in any way than
| individual.
|
| I feel you. Regulatory bodies have definitely fallen short in
| many cases, and we've seen concerning proposals from
| governments that threaten digital privacy and freedom. "Who
| watches the watchmen" seems incredibly apt nowadays.
|
| However, I feel there's a fundamental difference between
| imperfect accountability and no accountability at all. With a
| legal entity governed by stated policies, users have:
|
| 1. Transparency about who makes decisions and how
|
| 2. Clear terms that create binding commitments
|
| 3. Legal mechanisms for recourse if those commitments are
| violated
|
| 4. A persistent entity that can't simply disappear overnight
|
| Perfect? Not really. The ICO in the UK, for example, hasn't
| been amazing at enforcing data protection. But the existence
| of these frameworks means that accountability is at least
| _possible_ - there are levers that can be pulled if someone
| can be bothered to.
|
| In contrast, with software maintained by anonymous or loosely
| affiliated individuals, there's no structural accountability
| whatsoever. If privacy promises are broken, users have no
| recourse beyond abandoning the software.
|
| FOSS and auditability are valuable safeguards, sure, but they
| primarily protect against _unintentional_ privacy violations
| that might be discovered in code reviews. They don 't address
| the human element of intentional policy changes or decisions
| about data collection.
| Defletter wrote:
| I grow wearier by the day by the incessant calls to
| denounce and disown everything that isn't perfect.
| EndShell wrote:
| > I feel you. Regulatory bodies have definitely fallen
| short in many cases, and we've seen concerning proposals
| from governments that threaten digital privacy and freedom.
| "Who watches the watchmen" seems incredibly apt nowadays.
|
| Many regulatory bodies seem to constantly fall short of
| what they are supposed to do and then demand more money and
| powers to continue to fail at what they are supposed to do.
|
| At what point would you accept that they maybe not fit for
| purpose and other solutions should be considered?
|
| It maybe better to put resources into educating people on
| how to protect themselves from privacy breaches or minimise
| the impact.
|
| The only thing I've ever seen from the ICO is a letter
| saying that if I have customer data I have to pay them a
| fee or pay a fine. Then I have to go through the
| inconvenience of telling them I don't have any, so I don't
| have to pay this fee.
| sph wrote:
| 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 the product healthy and the
| user-centric promise alive. The Internet is saved.
|
| So why isn't anyone trying to replace Mozilla yet, with a more
| sane business model than living on the back of Google's fear of
| antitrust investigation? What's the worse that can happen?
|
| Just sell a bonafide paid version alongside the free one, don't
| just rely on donations. There is a massive difference between
| offering a paid product and begging passers-by to spare some
| change.
| mariusmg wrote:
| >So why isn't anyone trying to replace Mozilla yet,
|
| Because writing manifestos is easy and making a browser is
| proper hard work ?
| sph wrote:
| My comment is targeted to the developers of Waterfox and
| Librewolf - they're already making a browser, so the hard
| part is done.
|
| I'm wondering why don't they try to step it up further by
| selling a paid version alongside their open source product.
| What is the worst that can happen? Nobody pays for it and
| they continue making $0 just like they are happily doing
| now.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| >the hard part is done
|
| The hard part is the rendering engine and security. Both
| are done by the maintainer of the upstream source, i.e.
| Mozilla.
| Fnoord wrote:
| A paid version needs to offer something on top of it,
| which is usually in one way or another proprietary (such
| as a proprietary service).
|
| Something like this is regarded as the enshitification
| process, so what typically happens is they (e.g. VC) want
| to do such after they lured in their users. Which Firefox
| has (or arguably: had), but Waterfox and Librewolf have
| not.
|
| Good thought experiment.
|
| It ain't the first drama or controversy with regards to
| Mozilla, who have had a long tendency which didn't occur
| recently (and included the time Eich was there).
| Nostalgia just makes people forget the bad.
| kiba wrote:
| It doesn't need to be proprietary or have an advantage.
| It just need someone willing to pay for it and a
| mechanism for doing so.
|
| However, the default assumption is that all open source
| software is free to download and use.
|
| Of course, there's the matter of revenue. If you get 100
| dollars or 1000 dollars a month, is that significant to
| do anything useful for the project?
| nottorp wrote:
| It doesn't even need to be an extra service.
|
| I'd donate to Firefox for no additional service if they
| would guarantee my money only goes to the browser and not
| crypto or AI initiatives.
|
| Note donate. As in one time payments at a time of my
| choice. They also try to push towards subscriptions when
| you hit that donate button.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It does actually seem pretty difficult to sell a browser;
| I don't really see how anybody in their right mind would
| trust a closed source browser. So, it will be hard to
| make any parts of it proprietary. It isn't _impossible_
| to sell open source software of course, but it does seem
| to be pretty difficult.
|
| Rather, I wish we would stop accepting web standards that
| don't come with reference implementations. Then, we could
| have a reference browser, and just run that. I don't
| expect it to be performant, but I also don't think
| browser performance matters much at all. Web pages are
| not HPC applications.
|
| Currently we're accepting the anti-competitive behavior
| of Google, just DDoSing the community with new standards
| to implement. This is the root problem. The fact that
| Mozilla is being killed by funding problems is downstream
| of the fact that maintaining a web browser requires
| multiple full time engineers.
| bluGill wrote:
| https://buymeacoffee.com/waterfox wasn't hard to find
| that. (they also make money from search). Put your money
| where your mouth is and donate.
|
| Librewolf doesn't want to deal with the administrative
| overhead of donations - which if they'd only get a few
| donations makes sense. It likely costs several hundred a
| month just to hire the accountants and lawyers needed to
| get the paper work right (you can do it yourself at cost
| of time doing other things. Often you can find
| accountants and lawyers who will donate their services,
| but it is still several hundred dollars worth)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Donating is not the same as buying. When you donate you
| are subsidizing every freeloader who doesn't donate. No
| thanks.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Everybody who doesn't donate isn't a freeloader.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Sure, I'm not counting those who contribute with their
| work. But if you don't contribute with your work or with
| your money - that's a freeloader by definition.
| rat9988 wrote:
| Exactly, so why not write them?
| nerdponx wrote:
| Kagi is making the Orion browser, which you can pay for. I am
| a happy customer.
|
| There's also Ladybird and several Webkit wrappers.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Orion works on Apple OSes only.
| muzzy19 wrote:
| And is not open source
| pbronez wrote:
| Kagi has started porting Orion to Linux [1]. They've
| stated that multiplatform support is just a question of
| resources [2].
|
| You can contribute code [3] or money [4] to accelerate
| this process.
|
| [1] per 2/25 subscriber newsletter: "What's coming in
| 2025? ... We started working on Orion for Linux!"
|
| [2] https://orionfeedback.org/d/2321-orion-for-windows-
| android-l...
|
| [3] https://help.kagi.com/orion/support-and-
| community/contribute...
|
| [4] https://kagi.com/orion/orionplus.html
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > You can contribute code [3]
|
| How exactly? The link doesn't say. Orion appears to be
| closed source.
| pbronez wrote:
| Hmm... Dug into it a bit deeper.
|
| Kagi has several repos open for contributions [1] but
| Orion isn't fully open source yet [2]:
|
| > Is Orion open-source? > > We're working on it! We've
| started with some of our components and intend to open
| more in the future. > > Forking WebKit, porting hundreds
| of APIs, and writing a browser app from scratch has been
| challenging for our small team. Properly maintaining an
| open-source project takes time and resources that we are
| currently short on. If you would like to contribute,
| please consider becoming active on orionfeedback.org.
|
| It's not obvious to me which of their public repos are
| Orion components.
|
| You can contribute translations [3], bugs [4], and docs
| [5]. Orion is based on WebKit, so you can contribute
| upstream there [6]. Oodles of open issues on their
| bugzilla [7]
|
| [1] https://github.com/kagisearch
|
| [2] https://help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.html#oss
|
| [3] https://help.kagi.com/orion/support-and-
| community/contribute...
|
| [4] https://help.kagi.com/orion/support-and-
| community/troublesho...
|
| [5] https://help.kagi.com/orion/support-and-
| community/contribute...
|
| [6] https://webkit.org/contributing-code/
|
| [7] https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&pr
| oduct=W...
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Ladybird is targeting a 2026 alpha release and last time I
| looked they lacked site isolation and other sandboxing
| measures:
| https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/issues/57
| Y_Y wrote:
| This idea of having an moral alignment covenant I think is a
| great one. I'm fed up of being bait-and-switched by companies
| that get buy-in by being open and friendly, and then later
| they decide to kill the golden goose. If you're committed to
| FOSS then commit! Make it official so that people can trust
| that you're not going to enshittify later.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Open AI is still technically a non-profit. The price of
| freedom is eternal vigilance.
| nottorp wrote:
| Lol and they're as open as they're non profit.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Didn't you hear? After inflation there isn't a thing to
| be had for the paltry sum of mere eternal vigilance.
| aerzen wrote:
| I'd pay for this.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| The problem with paid versions, is that I don't really trust
| them either. MBA creep will happen and suddenly the TOS
| changes and my paid tier is going to have data collection and
| 'some' ads. I have to move to a high tier to avoid them.
| After a few cycles of that, one day all the tiers have data
| collection and ads.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Nothing is forever, but if you get a contract that
| prohibits their data play (collection, derivation, sale,
| all of it...) for a year or whatever, you're good for that
| long. That'd be enough for me.
| bluGill wrote:
| Paid version have that problem somewhat less because they
| have a source of income that could dry up if they do.
| Paying someone means they are beholden to you as well,
| while free gives you nothing.
|
| There is a reason I get my email via fastmail: they
| differentiate themselves on privacy features. I also have
| my own domain, so if fastmail does turn evil they know I
| can easially move away. I can run my own email server, but
| having done that I know it is harder than I want. There are
| other services I'd pay for if I could find someone I could
| trust to take a small amount of money. (small is key -
| plenty would do this for thousands, but I don't have that
| much free cash)
|
| Don't get me wrong, the above is not very large, but it is
| still something.
| tremon wrote:
| Yes, this. When Mozilla (or any other corporation)
| demonstrates positive cashflow, the odds of MBAs and other
| vulture capitalists descending on it increase massively.
| And I have never seen customer agreements like this survive
| a buy-out: the new owners are never constrained by the
| promises (or even contracts) of the previous company.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > The problem with paid versions, is that I don't really
| trust them either.
|
| Yes, Trust is at the foundation of the whole problem with
| the Tech Industry:
|
| /1/ users (consumers) _expect to be protected_ (not
| injured, not cheated, not surveilled) by the products that
| they use, and
|
| /2/ the WWW is a monstrosity, the only software that we can
| in fact trust is never connected to the Internet (in other
| words, we don't trust any software)
|
| Ergo...
|
| Given /2/, we cannot trust any software, full stop. Even
| paying $CORP for its products is no guarantee of care,
| safety, and security.
|
| and
|
| Given /1/, which software do we accept? For OS, I prefer
| Linux by far. Even where usability is a little rough, I can
| exclude components that I do not want. When obliged to use
| Windows, I hold my nose and _try as much as possible_ to
| foil all the bloat, anti-user patterns, and telemetry. I
| resent it all the way!
|
| I prefer Firefox because I like the features and I insist
| on a small set of extensions: uBlock Origin, Multi-Account
| Containers, Privacy Badger. Google is a nasty surveillance
| ecosystem and Microsoft is a Spaghetti Western: by turns
| good, bad, and ugly.
|
| If it will fund further development and maintain the
| current commitment to respect for privacy, I _am willing_
| to allow Mozilla to do some aggregate analysis of my
| browsing habits, just as I am willing to provide survey
| answers for products that I buy.
|
| I don't _love_ the aggregate analysis, but Mozilla needs to
| do browser business in the modern world.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The tech industry is just one rug-pull after another, but
| still people line up to try standing on the rugs!
|
| 1. We won't show ads in our product -> We'll show
| skippable unobtrusive adds in our free product only ->
| We'll show bottom-of-the-barrel scum ads in our free
| product only -> Those skippable ads are now not skippable
| -> We'll add a few vetted ads to the paid product ->
| We're going to shove ads onto every surface of the
| product we can find!
|
| 2. We don't collect or sell data about you -> We will
| collect limited data for "telemetry." -> We'll also
| collect some demographic data "to improve the product."
| -> We're going to collect everything we can get our hands
| on, but we won't sell it. -> We share your data with only
| vetted, trusted "partners." -> We share your data with
| everyone we do business with -> We firehose your data to
| anyone willing to pay for it!
|
| It's the same progression every time, but users keep
| thinking this time it will be different.
| throw10920 wrote:
| You have to trust and/or monitor and apply active pressure
| to (something that virtually nobody does) the developers to
| some extent either way. The difference with a paid
| distribution is that there's at least _some_ revenue that
| helps keep the project afloat, and with a free distribution
| there 's not.
|
| e.g. if you have a CEO/lead developer that's initially
| acting responsibly, but has a "bankruptcy threshold" beyond
| which they'll start selling your data, a revenue stream
| will stave that point off.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I tip some projects that help me. It's been years since
| mozilla started to do evolve in ways that feel weird. I'd tip
| for a fork.
|
| Question is: how many people would jump ship, and then how
| much money would that represent to pay devs.
| bluGill wrote:
| https://buymeacoffee.com/waterfox
|
| please do tip a fork. Right now this money seems to go to
| one person, but if that person starts making significant
| money we can probably talk them into hiring others to work
| on the project.
| agumonkey wrote:
| do you know if he has a paypal link ?
|
| also, slightly related, people should look into / take
| inspiration tor browser. they're really great at
| releasing regular updates with high quality and features,
| surely they know how to handle this kind of projects
| bluGill wrote:
| I didn't find one on the website, but maybe you can find
| it.
|
| I'm personally not a fan of paypal so I look for
| alternatives, though I have no idea if this is a good
| one.
| agumonkey wrote:
| yeah paypal is not the greatest, iirc opencollective and
| liberapay were nice too
| bloopernova wrote:
| Kagi's Orion browser has a lifetime sponsor price of $150.
| That plus the Kagi subscription support its development.
|
| It's currently macOS and iPad/iPhone only, but a Linux
| version is being worked on. I don't know their plans for a
| Windows version.
| traverseda wrote:
| Which is great, but I'm not going to buy it until it's
| fully open source: https://orionfeedback.org/d/3882-open-
| source-the-browser/34
| tigroferoce wrote:
| On one hand I agree, on the other hand, their claim that
| they are too small to support a large community of
| developers is not wrong.
|
| Also, they claim "zero telemetry", so I don't really know
| what's going on, I know it's not leaving my computer.
|
| I find that currently even if it's far from perfection,
| Orion is the lesser evil in the browser scenario.
| bluGill wrote:
| What is a fair price? Developers are not cheap and you need
| to pay many of them every month (or get the equivalent in
| donated time). We can debate that number of course, so I'm
| going to start the discussion at $50/year. So your
| "lifetime sponser" is only worth 3 years (ignoring interest
| which isn't significant at this time scale).
|
| Accounting for lifetime anything is hard (I don't know how
| to do the math, I'm sure people that do debate a lot of
| complex issues), but I'm again going to suggest that a
| lifetime subscription needs to be 20x the yearly fee to
| give a number to start the debate at.
| bloopernova wrote:
| oh absolutely, I agree. I don't think $150 is adequate to
| fund development of a browser.
| wobfan wrote:
| Tbh while I have been using Kagi as search and their AI
| assistant a lot lately, their browser lacks massively in
| functionality. uBlock Origin has never been working for me,
| neither on macOS nor on iOS, and for me it just doesn't
| deliver enough to convince me to switch.
| eduction wrote:
| And it crashes constantly. Lots of other bugs that you
| start noticing when doing deeper things. I tried it for
| about six months. Just not a reliable or serious browser
| although very fast when it actually works.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Brave https://brave.com/ has been around for a while
| lurk2 wrote:
| I am at the point where I would happily pay an annual
| subscription on the order of a few hundred dollars per year
| just to avoid the headaches of today's browsers. Don't add
| new features, don't change the look of anything, just give me
| security updates and bug fixes. The only problem with this
| model is what we saw happen to the streaming services; paying
| to avoid ads just means your data is worth that much more.
| Paying for a higher-tier plan is a signal that you have a
| greater level of disposable income, and are hence more
| valuable to advertisers.
|
| When this topic has been discussed on Hacker News in the
| past, it has also been pointed out that developing a browser
| with feature parity to Firefox or Chrome would be
| prohibitively expensive.
| wraptile wrote:
| > I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces
|
| The wobble seems to somewhat artificial. I'm having trouble
| believing Firefox could ever not be able to afford to continue
| browser development -- there are way too many interests at
| stake. Google alone would have no choice but to bail Firefox
| out because Chrome can't be the only browser without being
| regulated to hell and back.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Google providing most of their funding is a fact, and that
| this provides a large amount of leverage over what Firefox
| can do is obvious. So how is the balancing act artificial?
|
| For it to be self-imposed there needs to be an comparable
| amount of money ready to spring forth if Google ever pulled
| out that Mozilla is somehow keeping a lid on.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| We are able to develop not just an open source kernel,
| multiple different distributions and a large suite of
| software. I would think that we could also develop a
| browser that doesn't need to spy on us.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| we need to clean cut from mozilla.
|
| do they still make ot worthwhile for developers? are any on the
| payroll still?
|
| i think the community should mobilize to sign up for adopting A
| single fork* as the official fork and completely drop mozilla
| from existence.
|
| * only criteria should be the fork that is most convenient for
| all the other forks to just point to instead of mozilla and
| continue to ship with their patches. and that one fork should
| have the minimum resources to respond to security disclosures
| in place of mozilla, nothing else as a requirement.
| bluGill wrote:
| More importantly that fork should be what other forks base
| off of. Anyone can put a skin on a browser, but someone needs
| to do the engine. If every fork who wants an engine
| improvement goes to the one place there is some mass behind
| making the fork real, and the other forks can still to their
| skin if they think it useful. That one fork also means that
| when mozilla comes out with a new version there are enough
| hands to merge (at least until Mozilla diverges too far from
| the fork)
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| They got more than $7B to build a browser.
|
| "I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces"
|
| I would also love to face $7B existential wobbles.
| ta1243 wrote:
| To put that number in perspective, drawing just 1% of that
| down each year and putting in a bank account earning interest
| would fund 100 engineers on $500k/year indefinitely.
| dtech wrote:
| They got it over many years with ongoing expenses because
| they had a browser, so comparing it with 7B lump sum is
| silly.
|
| With the same argument you could probably retire, after all
| you already earned (years you've been working) * (average
| salary).
| nottorp wrote:
| I don't know... do they even have 100 engineers? Or 20
| and the rest is management and crypto and AI projects?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| You are right, they got $400M+ a year.
|
| I stand corrected, I would want to face the $400M+ per
| year existential wobble.
| ta1243 wrote:
| so if I've worked for 20 years from age 20 with a 100k
| average salary that's 2m
|
| A 2m lump sump at 20 would allow me to live a lifestyle
| of a 20k/year life, not good enough.
|
| Had I lived that over the last 20 years and saved the
| rest of the 100k in an 8% return fund then I'd have 4m
| today and could drawdown a 40k/year life at 1%.
|
| Had I been given a lump sum of 100 times my desired
| salary though, or 10m, then sure, no need to work.
| mock-possum wrote:
| And depending on where you live, 40k might be barely
| scraping by now, and certainly not enough another 20 or
| 40 years down the road when you get to the point where
| you need daily care and medical services.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| You may want to double check your math before you retire.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _so comparing it with 7B lump sum is silly._
|
| It's not that silly, because that's a huge amount of
| money. What do you think the gross expense of building
| software like this should be? Because this may be the end
| of the line.
| tempest_ wrote:
| How much has Google spent on Chrome.
|
| Big numbers without context are not useful outside of
| taking advantage of people who don't think critically.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but the reality is that it takes
| more than engineers to run a browser company. You'd have to
| find 100 engineers who can double as lawyers, designers,
| project managers, etc., and handle payroll, and HR, and
| after those 100 engineers end up doing the job of 300 other
| people, how much code are they writing? Your point about
| them appearing to waste money is taken, I'm just pointing
| out that it's not quite as bald-faced as that.
| superq wrote:
| It doesn't take more than engineers to maintain an open-
| source _browser_ , though. Why does it have to be a
| company at all? Remember Firefox? Firefox was literally
| just an act-of-love fork from some engineers from a dead
| acquisition by a dying dot-com era behemoth.
|
| Put another way, does the Linux kernel or the Python
| language need to be run by _a company_ , or will
| foundations does these jobs ok?
|
| There are plenty of open source projects that are
| enormously successful without a single lawyer or project
| manager in sight.
| itscrush wrote:
| 1. Is github the best place to report bugs / issues for
| Waterfox?
|
| 2. When (not in your lifetime obviously) Waterfox is broken,
| what canaries do you have deployed that we can archive now,
| like Mozilla's tell here?
|
| 3. What keeps waterfox afloat? Where/how do you accept funds?
|
| 4. How do I find a sync alternative or provide my own? Such
| that, I'm not reliant on Mozilla sync/backend? ... If none
| exists, how much would it cost for you to embed one? Would you
| accept a serious bounty for it assuming the focus is self
| hosted / no Waterfox backend services?
| rafram wrote:
| > When (not in your lifetime obviously) Waterfox is broken,
| what canaries do you have deployed that we can archive now,
| like Mozilla's tell here?
|
| This is so melodramatic. It's a set of patch files applied to
| the Firefox source tree. If an evil maintainer hatches a
| maniacal plan to collect user statistics and deletes the
| patch that removes telemetry or whatever, you can just `git
| revert`.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| _> it seems daft to me when others suggest using forks with no
| well-established governance of their own_
|
| Yes, it may be that we are jumping from the frying pan into the
| fire. On the bright-side this opens up an opportunity for a
| company, or a suite of companies, to fund an alternative
| browser. Such an entity might have Signal at its lead, or
| similar, who's mission is solely to "tighten up" the software
| stack on which it runs.
| Lio wrote:
| That sounds very much like Ladybird's mission.
|
| _Truly independent_
|
| _No code from other browsers. We 're building a new engine,
| based on web standards._
|
| _Singular focus_
|
| _We are focused on one thing: the web browser._
|
| _No monetization_
|
| _No "default search deals", crypto tokens, or other forms of
| user monetization, ever. _
|
| https://ladybird.org/
| lolinder wrote:
| Rather odd policy choices is an understatement.
|
| The context to keep in mind here is that Mozilla purchased an
| ad company back in June. They spent money on it, and they
| _will_ move to earn a return on investment.
|
| Absent that context this could just be another tone deaf policy
| choice that gets rolled back when there's enough heat, but with
| that context in mind it's far more likely to be them laying the
| legal foundation to incorporate Anonym's targeted advertising
| into Firefox.
|
| From the Register article about the acquisition:
|
| > Arielle Garcia, director of intelligence for ad watchdog
| Check My Ads, told The Register in an email that she's
| generally skeptical of claims about privacy-preserving ad
| technology.
|
| > "For example, how do Anonym's audience capabilities, like
| their lookalike modeling, jibe with what Mozilla considers to
| be 'exploitative models of data extraction?' The data that is
| 'securely shared' by platforms and advertisers to enable ad
| targeting and measurement have to come from somewhere - and
| there's more to privacy than not leaking user IDs."
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/mozilla_buys_anonym_b...
| jeltz wrote:
| This is not the first time Mozilla bought an ad company, last
| time it was Qlikz. And last time it cost them most of their
| German users. Wonder how many users they will lose this time.
| AyyEye wrote:
| > I should point out, it seems daft to me when others suggest
| using forks with no well-established governance of their own,
| essentially shifting trust from an organisation at least
| answerable to certain regulations, to individuals with no
| proper framework or guidelines
|
| Individuals that care about these things have a far better
| track record than any business with employees, bills to pay,
| and investors.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Until that individual tires of the work, and then stops
| working on it completely or sells it to someone with less
| scruples or the project gets hijacked by malicious actor.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| Aren't the latter two more or less what happened to
| Firefox?
| dylan604 wrote:
| I think it's pretty much what happens to every thing
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| 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.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| Just use https://librewolf.net
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| So: # apt install librewolf Reading
| package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done
| Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate
| package librewolf
|
| If the thing that doesn't suck isn't the thing that comes
| with the OS, it's time to fix the OS.
|
| Also, that feature should exist. The next time I see a story
| about MS training ChatGPT on your nude selfies, I want to be
| able to show people the big red switch that says "All
| Telemetry: OFF" as an example of something Microsoft will
| never give them.
|
| But you first have to provide it in order to show to them
| that you provide it.
| rasmus-kirk wrote:
| Apt is basically just a bad package manager:
| nix run nixpkgs#librewolf
|
| But I do agree, it's hard to find these alternatives, and
| have them be "just works". Librewolf still sometimes have
| weird issues (for good reasons!), but it means I don't
| recommend it to "normies". I just tell them to use firefox
| and most importantly adblock, giving up ads is a huge ROI
| both in terms of quality of life and data privacy.
| Everything else is almost marginal in comparison.
| blueflow wrote:
| Apt being a bad package manager is not related to the
| selection of packages that Debian ships or doesn't.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| That is a distro problem not a software problem. Librewolf
| is available as a flatpak meaning on every Linux desktop
| distro.
|
| https://flathub.org/apps/io.gitlab.librewolf-community
|
| If you want to be pendantic again:
|
| apt -y install flatpak && flatpak install
| io.gitlab.librewolf-community
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It is possible to improve the distribution and that is
| the thing being requested.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| If you want to improve the distro go ahead. But it's
| fantasy that every distro will support every software =>
| flatpak
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The suggestion is not for all distributions to support
| all applications, it's for Debian to support system-wide
| disabling of telemetry in the software it does support.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| They could compile Firefox with telemetry disabled
| however i would not trust those settings since even with
| that Firefox does plenty of unsolicited phoning home and
| has a lot of bloat.
| mFixman wrote:
| Why Librewolf and not Waterfox or any other open source fork?
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| because I don't think a tiny browser fork that moves too
| far from the original is maintainable and secure long term.
| even someone of microsofts size seems to think so.
| librewolf is mostly config changes and couple small patches
| removing superficial anti-feature like pocket.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| It's time for distributions to only include browsers developed
| by non-profits
| roenxi wrote:
| If Debian could just stick to free software that'd be grand.
| It is a good ideology and there is no need to change it.
| Introducing ideological confusion is one of the paths to
| organisational rot.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Which network access is telemetry?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| User explicitly requests connection to a specific server
| (e.g. navigates to debian.org), so browser makes a connection
| to debian.org: Not telemetry.
|
| User explicitly requests a connection to a specific server
| (e.g. navigates debian.org), then browser makes a connection
| to mozilla.org to upload metadata: Telemetry.
|
| In general telemetry is when the software connects to a
| server chosen by the developers and not telemetry is when the
| software connects to a server chosen by the user.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| When I open Slack, to which servers am I explicitly
| requesting a connection?
|
| I see your point, but my point is that implementing this is
| either impossible or would require changing how networks
| are used by programs at a fundamental level.
|
| A middle ground might be to create a distro that uses
| something like SELinux to prevent all network access to
| non-system processes. Then each package would have to be
| audited to determine which addresses it can bind to, and/or
| which name lookups it can do, and how those capabilities
| are connected to actions performed by the user. Then there
| is still the question of what to do about software that
| accesses the network independent of the user, but maybe you
| can argue that shouldn't exist. How do updates work?
| Besides, if I allow Slack to connect to mychats.slack.com,
| nothing prevents the software from sending telemetry to
| that endpoint. You would need an army of manual enforcers,
| and that's not to mention non-free software.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > When I open Slack, to which servers am I explicitly
| requesting a connection?
|
| Debian only supplies open source software. Proprietary
| apps that only support the vendor's service aren't
| included as it is. Open source apps using standard
| protocols like Matrix or similar do allow the user to
| choose the server.
|
| > A middle ground might be to create a distro that uses
| something like SELinux to prevent all network access to
| non-system processes.
|
| We're talking about open source software in the official
| repositories. You're not putting it in a jail to thwart
| it from defecting on you, you're modifying the code so
| that it doesn't even try.
|
| > How do updates work?
|
| When you install Debian it asks you which mirror you want
| to use for updates. Several of them are provided by
| universities etc. You can also make your own and some
| large organizations do that.
| aembleton wrote:
| Would cdn-debian.org be allowed? Its on a different domain,
| but I've noticed a lot of websites use a different domain
| to host their CDN.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're referring to requests from the same page as the
| one the user requested, rather than requests by the
| browser at the behest of the browser developer. Loading
| it is presumably what the user intended by navigating to
| the page and if it isn't then at that point it's in the
| bailiwick of uBlock etc.
| amelius wrote:
| We need an EU alternative to Firefox.
| xvilka wrote:
| Just sponsor Servo[1], it will be much safer than Chrome or
| Firefox once ready.
|
| [1] https://opencollective.com/servo
| Phelinofist wrote:
| Is it EU based though?
| xvilka wrote:
| Overseed[1] by Linux Foundation Europe.
|
| [1] https://servo.org/about/
| procaryote wrote:
| So... 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?
| DaSHacka wrote:
| That's almost exactly describing Librewolf, though it adds a
| ton of privacy 'hardening' features out-of-the-box, which can
| be a positive or negative depending on who you ask.
|
| I personally use Librewolf with the Lepton (Photon style)
| UI[0], which replicates the previous UI style Firefox used a
| couple years ago, with small square tabs and condensed menus,
| before the current pseudo-tabletified abomination.
|
| Of course, if you like the current UI--you'd literally be the
| first person I've met to like it--you can just use librewolf
| stock and it doesn't apply any changes to the standard Firefix
| UI.
|
| [0] https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
| AyyEye wrote:
| Librewolf seems to be the best.
| https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/
| BSDobelix wrote:
| So since last year's debacle with Mozilla being an add-on company
| plus this ToU was the boiling point for me:
|
| -Removed Firefox from all machines, replaced with LibreWolf.
|
| -Deleted my Mozilla account.
|
| -Changed to brave on mobile
|
| Took about 15 minutes.
|
| When evil shows it's real face and wants to tell me how and for
| what I can use my software, that's a goodbye Mozilla....so much
| for your ethics.
| baobun wrote:
| Been using Firefox as main browser since it was called Mozilla.
|
| It's the only desktop application I've consistently installed on
| every desktop for that long. This is the end of that era and ends
| the streak.
|
| It's as frustrating as it's sad.
| aembleton wrote:
| What are you replacing it with?
| baobun wrote:
| This is getting niche enough that I'd doxx myself :^)
|
| Check out everything recommended elsewhere in this thread
| though! And strive to compile your own fork based on
| whatever.
| tux wrote:
| Ask HN: Is ungoogled chromium a good alternative ?
| DaSHacka wrote:
| It's missing containers and overall has less privacy features
| available than firefox.
|
| This is exemplified compared to forks like librewolf that
| enable the majority of them.
|
| Ungoogled Chromium and stock Firefox are pretty similar
| privacy-wise though.
|
| The main advantage is all baked-in telemetry is stripped out,
| but it doesn't do much to protect you from privacy-invasive
| sites other than disabling WebRTC and blocking 3rd party
| cookies.
|
| I used it for a number of years, but recently switched to
| Librewolf ~5 months ago and don't expect to switch back unless
| Firefox and all downstream forks completely implode.
| dheerajvs wrote:
| The main question for me is can ungoogled Chromium run uBlock
| Origin?
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Yes, it's just a downstream fork of chromium. It can run
| any extension that runs on the equivalent upstream build of
| chromium.
|
| For the same reasons you can install it on Librewolf too,
| and it actually comes with ublock origin pre-installed.
| weikju wrote:
| > Yes, it's just a downstream fork of chromium. It can
| run any extension that runs on the equivalent upstream
| build of chromium.
|
| Therefore, no, it cannot run uBlock Origin, or soon will
| be unable to run it.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| It can run ublock origin right now, and will be able to
| run ublock origin lite into the future.
|
| No chromium-based browser currently plans to keep MV2
| support. It's just not feasible for a small group to keep
| it maintained ontop of the inevitable breaking changes
| that will be introduced in upstream over time.
|
| If this bothers you, use a real browser that isn't
| sourced from an ad company.
|
| Otherwise, you'll be getting exactly what you should
| expect, and nothing more.
| RandyOrion wrote:
| Ungoogled chromium is a good alternative in terms of privacy
| because all google-related services are gutted and there are no
| other built-in telemetry things.
|
| There are some downsides, too.
|
| First, you have to do some research on learning to make this
| browser work conveniently, e.g. finding alternative services to
| sync and backup your settings, bookmarks, accounts and
| passwords, etc.
|
| Second, changes pushed by Google like Manifest V3 is still hard
| to deal with.
| MortyWaves wrote:
| I see a lot of people suggesting Brave, but is it still full of
| crypto nonsense?
| DaSHacka wrote:
| The coin is still baked into the browser, but it's disabled by
| default and doesn't really nag you about it.
|
| At least, that's how it was when I used Brave around 2021-2022.
|
| I've long-since moved to Librewolf, but it's my 'plan C'
| browser if SHTF with firefox and its downstream forks ('plan B'
| being Ungoogled Chromium)
| TingPing wrote:
| Yes.
| andirk wrote:
| Brave has a couple crypto features in the UI but that's about
| it. I'm big on crypto but I don't use any of the browser's
| crypto features. Just a browser that cuts most of the bullshit
| out.
| justsee wrote:
| Only if you enable it?
|
| The problem with the other mainstream browsers is they're
| embedded with ad-tech nonsense which you can't get rid of.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Related on 27-feb-2025:
|
| Mozilla owns "information you input through Firefox"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065 271 comments
|
| Mozilla's new terms of use are out of step with Firefox's direct
| competition https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43194536 139
| comments
|
| Mozilla Introducing 'Terms of Use' to Firefox
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43187423 40 comments
|
| Welcome to Ladybird, a truly independent web browser
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200806 211 comments
| nanis wrote:
| 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
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| 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.
| skeledrew wrote:
| Hmm it seems to me a viable solution (at least for the more tech
| inclined) is to just firewall it so it's unable to call home
| (although then there's an extension sourcing issue). Unless
| there's more of a philosophical stance. Or am I missing something
| else?
|
| I've been a mostly happy Firefox user since v2, and have made it
| through - though will never forget - the extensions system
| "upgrade" debacle and more. As long as I have means to maintain
| reasonable control, I'll continue with it into the foreseeable
| future, because I consider the Chromium-based alternatives to be
| worse.
| afastow wrote:
| "At least for the more tech inclined" instantly eliminates 99%
| of users, probably even of Firefox for what you're talking
| about. I mean I'm tech inclined and I have no idea how you
| propose to firewall an _internet browser_ from calling home.
| Maybe it 's possible, I've never tried so I legitimately don't
| know. But if it is, it's an absolutely meaningless portion of
| users who'd even be able to do so much less go through the
| effort of actually doing it.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| i switched to Firefox because of Google's Chrome's nonsense on
| ublock origin. turn out Mozilla's firefox also have its own
| nonsense.
| apalerwuss wrote:
| 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."
|
| I'm not saying that this definitely makes a material difference,
| but it certainly changes the framing of it. The way he has framed
| it makes it sound like Mozilla has given itself carte blanche to
| do what it wants -- but the little caveat at the end of the
| sentence really does change the narrative a little bit. So why
| cut off a sentence half-way through it -- is it maybe to make it
| sound worse? For that reason alone, I can't take this guy
| seriously.
| thorw93040494 wrote:
| But Mozilla said what they will do. They also had very
| expensive rebranding to support it! They are now activist AI
| company that wants to fight disinformation, censor people and
| sell ads.
| misnome wrote:
| > "....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.
| bolognafairy wrote:
| No. We are talking about legality. Quote the whole bloody
| thing. If you don't get to say "I picked out the bit I like"
| in court, then you don't get to do it here. If you're so
| right, then it's not worth taking out in the first place.
| apalerwuss wrote:
| Yes exactly this -- thank you for getting my point, I'm a
| little tired of internet people misunderstanding things.
| I'm not even disputing that Mozilla is trying to pull a
| fast one on all of us, I'm purely questioning the framing
| by the "journalist" this post links to. To be taken
| seriously, quote the whole thing -- if it really is a case
| that the last part of the sentence is meaningless, then
| leave that in your quote, and address that in your
| wittering diatribe, explaining to all of us why it's
| meaningless. Without that, all I see is someone
| cherrypicking half-sentences and trying to mislead people.
| mzajc wrote:
| While I'm by no means defending Mozilla here, one quick
| look at the linked twitter user's history shows that
| generating rage and taking text out of context is their
| modus operandi and very much intentional.
|
| I'm bummed that out of all the posts on the topic, this
| is the one that gets to stay on the frontpage.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Quoting the whole bloody thing is meaningless when the
| added bit adds nothing to the context. Nothing about the
| "added context" says they won't sell the data. If anything
| it just improves the case that they are going to sell the
| data.
| apalerwuss wrote:
| None of this matters -- quote the whole sentence if that
| part of the sentence adds any kind of modifier or caveat
| to what came before -- which this did. Again, not saying
| it makes a material difference, but I just find it weird
| when people decide to "quote" things and leave out the
| whole thing. It tells me that they don't mean well.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Correct, that quote is very typical corporate language that
| includes selling your data to advertising companies to _"
| "help users discover new experiences which align with their
| interests""_ or some other weasel speak. People acting like
| that language meaningfully changes the meaning are either
| painfully naive or think the rest of us are.
|
| If it's simply a matter of principle, quoting the full
| section with no abridgements because we're larping like we're
| in a court room or something, whatever. But get real, that
| section doesn't make Mozilla look any better.
| dizhn wrote:
| That bit pretty much sounds like "by using the software you're
| agreeing to whatever"
| immibis wrote:
| No it doesn't. Most businesses finish that sentence with
| "...for any purpose" not "... to help you navigate the web"
|
| It will still be interpreted to mean "...for any purpose" by
| Mozilla somehow.
| CjHuber wrote:
| For me it sounds similar to Google's phrasing that they use
| to make people activate personalized ads: ,,used to deliver
| better, more helpful experiences"
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| How does them selling my data help me navigate the web?
| dizhn wrote:
| In their holier than thou attitude (shared by some here)
| you have to pay to do anything. And that's how you pay to
| use the web with their browser.
| jeltz wrote:
| By serving you relevant ads!
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| "...interact with online content" is pretty much all
| encompassing.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Yes and this phrasing is used in many other products, like
| credit cards. Additionally, the fact that the phrasing _can
| be interpreted_ as such means that it _will be interpreted_
| as such and so makes Mozilla 's new Terms unacceptable to
| anyone who values their privacy or data.
| belorn wrote:
| Im fully on board that people should try to include or link as
| much of a story they can so that I can form my own opinion.
| There are way too many times that I read a reasonable take,
| then you read the original source, only to find that the
| reasonable take is completely off base.
|
| In this case I don't have the reaction, but I will agree that
| in general its a good idea to include more rather than less.
|
| The redacted part here looks to be a GDPR boilerplate for
| consent. GDRP require consent to be _specific_. In order to do
| so the lawyers of Mozilla seems to have used industry standard
| phrasing to comply with the law, such as "to help you
| navigate, enhance experience, and interact with {INSERT
| SERVICE/PRODUCT}".
|
| For those with some interest in legal history, there is similar
| stories in other boilerplate texts that consumer get exposed
| to. I always find the background to the WARRANTY DISCLAIMER
| text to have a fairly funny historical background that is a few
| centuries old legal case regarding a mill axle. The current
| form we see now was created as the first example in a list from
| US regulation guidelines (which reference the mill axle case).
| A company can use any other form given in that guideline, but
| as it happens, everyone just jumped on the first example,
| slapped it onto stuff and shipped it. Lawyers know it is valid
| for US trade regulation and that was apparently enough for the
| rest of the world.
| fergie wrote:
| You are kind of answering your own question here...
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I generally wait before jumping on the outrage-train for this
| reason, but two things stand out:
|
| - Mozilla explicitly deleting "we don't sell your data"
| statements across their documentation
|
| - Following up to criticism that the statement is vague,
| bullshitty and open to interpretation with statements that are
| even more vague, bullshitty and open to interpretation.
|
| By now, they've had time to notice that something is not right
| and that they need to make a _clear_ statement, and they haven
| 't taken the opportunity.
| nusl wrote:
| They didn't delete it. Go to the github diff they reference
| and check. It's still there. They just removed it from one of
| the JSON files but people here aren't actually checking
| facts, they're just jumping on the hate train.
|
| See: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8
| 144b...
| olyjohn wrote:
| People love to hate Firefox. Reinforces their reasons for
| using the shiny big brands.
| crtasm wrote:
| So where is that paragraph found on their website?
|
| The relevant section isn't what you linked to - scroll down
| to the change in structured-data-firefox-faq.html
|
| Here is the previous version of the FAQ: https://web.archiv
| e.org/web/20250128115051/https://www.mozil...
|
| Here it is now: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/faq/
|
| All three statements about not selling your personal data
| are gone.
| nusl wrote:
| Good point. I checked the page it should be on, and the
| switch has disabled it. I checked also
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#lawful-
| bases and it smells like Firefox is selling its users
| out.
|
| Specially bits like this: "This data may be shared with
| our advertising partners on a de-identified or aggregated
| basis."
|
| Apologies for my previous defense of Firefox. I can't
| find a reason to defend them anymore.
| binary132 wrote:
| I can't take people seriously who think the little frilly PR
| bandaids that companies slap on these types of statements mean
| much of anything at all.
|
| For example, "we promise".
| theamk wrote:
| are you replying to wrong post? the linked tweet says:
|
| > Mozilla has just deleted the following:
|
| > "Does Firefox sell your personal data?"
|
| > "Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many
| of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to
| protect your privacy. That's a promise. "
|
| That tweet is 100% correct, see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43209001 for two links,
| all references to "not selling personal data" are gone. There
| is no missing context or truncation here, and this says nothing
| about terms-of-use (except commit message but that's
| immaterial)
| mijoharas wrote:
| So, what do you read the end of that sentence mean? Because the
| way I read it is worse:
|
| > to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online
| content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
|
| I don't read that as a caveat, so I'm assuming it means
| something different to you. To reword slightly and hopefully
| show how that sentence is coming across to me:
|
| > As you have indicated by using Firefox you have given us the
| right to...
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| https://xcancel.com/LundukeJournal/status/189524980533888659...
| qwertox wrote:
| What I ask myself is why is Firefox collecting months of
| telemetry data if _sending_ telemetry is disabled.
|
| If I disable telemetry, I would also expect it to not get
| collected.
| amiga386 wrote:
| So that there's plenty to send when they oops-accidentally
| forget that setting during an upgrade, and ask you to set it
| again.
|
| They will of course assume opt-out rather than opt-in, and send
| what they've collected the moment the browser launches, then
| they're ready to give you the choice of opt-out once again.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| How does corporate promises work? Like, I used Firefox when they
| promised never to sell my data. So I should be grandfathered,
| right?
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| 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.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| There's also agreements and tos
| lightandlight wrote:
| I was pretty confused about why this even exists (it's weird to
| read a bunch of paragraphs that are semantically valid but don't
| seem to convey information), and then I read the [Privacy
| Notice](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox). Looks
| like there's a decent amount of surveillance / ad tech built in
| to Firefox.
|
| From "How is your data used?":
|
| > Firefox also shows its own search suggestions based on
| information stored on your local device (including recent search
| terms, open tabs, and previously visited URLs). These suggestions
| may include sponsored suggestions from Mozilla's partners
|
| > Mozilla's partners receive de-identified information about
| interactions with the suggestions they've served.
|
| > Depending on your location, Mozilla derives the high level
| category (e.g., travel, shopping) of your search from keywords in
| that query, in order to understand the types and number of
| searches being made. We utilize privacy preserving technologies
| such that Mozilla only learns that someone, somewhere, performed
| a search relating to a particular category, without knowing who.
|
| > Mozilla may also receive location-related keywords from your
| search (such as when you search for "Boston") and share this with
| our partners to provide recommended and sponsored content. Where
| this occurs, Mozilla cannot associate the keyword search with an
| individual user once the search suggestion has been served and
| partners are never able to associate search suggestions with an
| individual user.
|
| > You may be able to opt into an enhanced search experience,
| which will result in Mozilla processing additional personal data,
| including your technical data, location and search data. Some of
| that information may be shared with our partners on a de-
| identified and/or aggregated basis.
|
| > We use technical data, language preference, and location to
| serve content and advertising on the Firefox New Tab page in the
| correct format (i.e. for mobile vs desktop), language, and
| relevant location. Mozilla collects technical and interaction
| data, such as the position, size, views and clicks on New Tab
| content or ads, to understand how people are interacting with our
| content and to personalize future content, including sponsored
| content. This data may be shared with our advertising partners on
| a de-identified or aggregated basis.
|
| > In some instances, when ads are enabled on New Tab, additional
| browsing data may also be processed locally on your device to
| measure the effectiveness of those ads; such data will only be
| shared with Mozilla and/or our advertising partners via our
| privacy-preserving technologies on an aggregated and/or de-
| identified basis.
|
| > When you allow us to do so, Firefox sends Mozilla data about
| the website domain or specific advertising campaign (if any) that
| referred you to our download page to help us understand and
| improve our marketing efforts. Firefox also shares information
| with our marketing partners to measure and improve these
| campaigns; what information is specifically shared varies
| (depending on how you discovered Firefox and your operating
| system) but generally includes how you were referred to our
| download page and whether you actively use Firefox. Where Firefox
| is pre-installed on your device, technical and interaction data
| (your device type and whether Firefox is used) will be sent to
| our marketing partners, and shared with Mozilla.
| palata wrote:
| I have been wanting to love Mozilla for a while, but let's be
| honest: I use Firefox because Mozilla is the least shitty of
| those companies. I don't like Mozilla, I just hate them less than
| the alternatives.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's just _sad_ that everything eventually comes to this.
|
| Is it an inevitable law that everything eventually enshittifies?
| Firefox has had a good run, but it still pisses me off.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| That's all! Thanks for watching folks.
| nonelog wrote:
| What does that mean for the Tor browser [0] which is based on
| Firefox?
|
| [0] https://www.torproject.org/
| 1cecreamface wrote:
| It means that the state got a two-for-one deal.
| TingPing wrote:
| Nothing. The ToS is not part of the license to the code.
| bArray wrote:
| It's times like these I look forward to the likes of the Ladybird
| browser [1] making progress.
|
| [1] https://ladybird.org/
| zihotki wrote:
| Mozilla became an ads company after acquiring ads tech startup
| Anonym. These changes follow that direction.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Guess they have to pay the CEO's seven million dollar salary
| somehow - \ _ ( tsu ) _ / -
| blitzar wrote:
| I promise, I will never die.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| I kept getting flagged for calling out Firefox/Mozilla, for years
|
| Now you get what you deserve, folks
| 12ian34 wrote:
| ignore the rage-bait and learn contract law and terminology.
| hofrogs wrote:
| I'm sure there is a better source than that culture warrior
| twitter account.. Like the commit on github itself, for instance.
| thedanbob wrote:
| 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 worth something
| to you.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| > I hope my reading HN and watching inane Youtube videos is
| worth something to you.
|
| Oh it is. It definitely is
| bluGill wrote:
| Only if they can use it for ads which was blocked in this
| discussion.
|
| Of course in the real world odds are they can't block ads
| perfectly and thus the data has value.
| Sontho wrote:
| Mozilla too?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| "Never" always means "Until we decide otherwise".
| pestaa wrote:
| Shout-out to Vivaldi. If you're looking for alternatives, give it
| a chance.
|
| The engine monoculture is not great, but they're a small team and
| doing a great job to create a useful browser.
| metalman wrote:
| only if: there was a firefox module that could run continious
| scatelogical searches in the background , and repost randon grabs
| to a bot only forum, and mozilla would own, a lot of **
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Windows user, 32 years FF user (Mosaic, Netscape, Firefox), what
| to do now?
|
| Anyone forking? (I don't want a derivate which Mozilla controls)
|
| [edit] Switched to Waterfox (Macos, Windows, Linux, Android), no
| fork but better than FF for now
| einr wrote:
| _Firefox forks:_
|
| * Waterfox
|
| * Librewolf
|
| * GNU IceCat
|
| * Pale Moon
|
| * Seamonkey
|
| _Chromium forks:_
|
| * Ungoogled-Chromium
|
| * Thorium
|
| * Iridium
|
| You'll have to do your own due diligence as far as how
| trustworthy or suitable these are, but nominally privacy-
| respecting alternatives do exist.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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?
| einr wrote:
| 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. With Mozilla circling the drain lately, maybe that
| could change. But right now, for the purposes of removing
| privacy-unfriendly antifeatures, I find them sufficiently
| independent for my purposes. Most Firefox code isn 't evil.
|
| If you want something _like_ Firefox but you 're adamant
| that Mozilla can exercise no control over it, Pale Moon is
| probably the one you want to look at.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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.
| einr wrote:
| _You are successful, they will change the license, and
| you 're dead_
|
| Yeah, but this assumes that Mozilla itself is successful
| enough to retain the leverage to pull back users towards
| Firefox.
|
| With the kind of stuff they have been pulling lately it's
| possible to see a future where one of the above forks (or
| call-them-what-you-will) gain traction and take users and
| developers away from Firefox. If this happens, Mozilla
| deciding to close off the code would just be the last
| nail in their coffin.
| Batman8675309 wrote:
| Thorium is regularly 3 months behind on updates
|
| Iridium brings me to a 404 when I try to download it for
| MacOS
|
| Sadly, neither seem like good options.
| einr wrote:
| _Thorium is regularly 3 months behind on updates_
|
| Unfortunate, I suppose, but this is the kind of tradeoff
| that is to be expected when switching to something
| maintained by one guy in their bedroom instead of a
| megacorp.
| kristjank wrote:
| Mozilla is going down the path of enshittification. I don't
| really care what the exact AUP, ToS and other legalese tomes boil
| down to, I should not need to agree to nothing but the license to
| use a piece of free software. If they only wanted this shit to
| apply to the online services, they should state it as such.
|
| I am sad to state this, but this is likely the straw that broke
| the camel's back for me. I am convinced that there is a huge
| silent majority of users here that care about the erosion of
| privacy and data abuse because that's why we were using Firefox
| in the first place. If I don't have any assurance of my rights,
| privacy, anonymity and the general assurance of virtues that a
| capital F - Free Software- should exhibit. If I have to settle
| for a solution that doesn't respect my rights, I will use
| something more complete, well supported and user-friendly.
| margorczynski wrote:
| The writing on the wall was there since a long time ago
| considering the actions of the foundations leadership. They burn
| money like crazy on some useless stuff, no direction or idea how
| to bring back FF into the spotlight where it belongs.
|
| Now with the changes with Chrome (basically killing of
| adblockers) they have a big window to make a play but instead
| they make the most idiotic move possible. Typical Mozilla - a mix
| of great tech (e.g. Rust) and detached from reality leadership.
|
| I've been using Firefox since decades, even when it was a slow
| and buggy piece of crap compared to Chrome but now I think it is
| time to move to something else. But what will guarantee me I
| won't get a rug pull when some MBA takes the reins?
| braiamp wrote:
| People are acting like this is new. This is about:studies. With
| about:studies you agreed to upload usage data. Right now they are
| enabling credit card autofill support, a CRL alternative that
| doesn't give information about the sites you visit, etc. Actual
| corporate goes out of their way to say "we do whatever we want",
| Mozilla at least gives a condition.
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| Like they say, die early or live long enough to become a villain.
|
| I never thought I would live to see the day when Mozilla's ethics
| would shift away so much from the "ethical" alignment.
|
| Does anyone have any idea of what has changed inside Mozilla to
| prompt this?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Maybe business necessity finally caught up with them
| mseepgood wrote:
| How does this matter? If it said "never" it cannot be changed by
| deleting it, because never means for eternity. Otherwise it
| wasn't a promise.
| leyoDeLionKin wrote:
| Sell out
| g8oz wrote:
| The Vivaldi browser takes donations FYI.
| https://login.vivaldi.net/profile/donations
| layer8 wrote:
| Relevant discussion:
| https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/information-about...
| buyucu wrote:
| Mozilla lost its missing a long time ago. The previous CEO was a
| disaster, and it looks like this one is too.
| AlgebraFox wrote:
| I think it's safe now to call Mozila's management as criminals.
| They are using old Mozilla's reputation to profit off people's
| data.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| I note LibreWolf is built from FF sources.
|
| Zen also.
|
| Are they specifically removing the telemetry stuff Moz are going
| to use to collect user data?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| They just use Gecko, right? Is telemetry actually built into
| the rendering engine
| AyyEye wrote:
| https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/
|
| Librewolf has less spyware than waterfox.
| gfkclzhzo wrote:
| Lately I've been working on strategies to use software in unusual
| enough ways that I'm essentially off the radar of, well, anyone
| looking. The dark forest approach to the internet.
|
| To avoid interacting with the web directly, I'm thinking of
| running some AI software in a container on a home server that
| would be a translation layer between me and the real web. All
| webpages would be converted to a simple, and secure, format.
| Gopher, gemini, asciidoc, or maybe just static html.
|
| Is that a tractable problem with modern AI tools?
|
| The only way to win is not to play, but I'd like to have my cake
| and eat it too.
| sjs382 wrote:
| The more unique your habits, the easier to fingerprint. That
| said, with those habits, you may be a less attractive audience.
| numinix wrote:
| Can someone elaborate on what this means? Has Mozilla completely
| abandoned the "privacy" focus? I.e. should I stop recommending
| the browser and find an alternative? Deleting sentences like "We
| never sell your data" is for a long-time fan of the browser very
| alarming. But frankly I'm confused by the PR/blogs and can't tell
| from the privacy policy if/how it now allows selling my data.
| Dowwie wrote:
| I'm not using Firefox because it's functionally superior to
| Chrome. I use it because it's not a surveillance technology and
| Chrome is. Privacy is the only reason why I'm using Firefox.
|
| The board governing Firefox development has got to be some of the
| worst. They don't understand the product nor their users.
| mushufasa wrote:
| I honestly don't understand why Mozilla isn't succeeding with a
| "privacy subscription" where for $100/year (or $20/month or
| something) you get a full kit of digital sovereignty tools.
| Password manager, Mozilla, email with privacy features, secure
| file transfer, ephemeral cards...
|
| I'm genuinely curious if people can comment why this isn't
| working -- because it seems like they've actually already tried
| versions of this!
| AyyEye wrote:
| Google pays them south of a $billion/year. Your money means
| nothing.
| righthand wrote:
| Just installed Librewolf last night and will gladly support the
| end of Mozilla.
| daitangio wrote:
| As Far as I can understand, Firefox is paid by Google just to
| justify chrome is not the only choice, and avoid anti-trust
| lawsuit.
|
| I read the Google money are the true income, and it is a pity,
| because this technology merits more now than in the past.
| gortok wrote:
| If you don't want this to happen, then a company would need to:
|
| 1. Have the capital to build and maintain a browser 2. By selling
| copies of that browser 3. In sufficient funds to keep the
| business going and make the owners a profit.
|
| Let's say you can do it with a small team -- if you're forking
| something like firefox, and pay for the salary of 21 people --
| full time, 8 developers, a PM, a manager, Customer support (3
| people), 3 sales folks, and 3 testers, and one owner.
|
| If the average salary is $175,000, and the fully loaded cost of
| each employee (including office space, equipment, benefits) is
| $250,000, then just to break even -- and not even account for
| inflation or costs rising -- and not even accounting for capital
| expenditures, the product would have to sell 105,000 copies at
| $50 a pop.
|
| If you sold it for $30 a year, that's now 175,000 copies, every
| year. Realistically, to account for taxes and the fact that
| Developer salaries are no longer expensible (thanks Trump!),
| you'd have to sell around twice that number of copies, so around
| 350,000 copies of this browser, a year. Every year. Just to break
| even.
|
| When's the last time 350,000 people said, "I want to buy a web
| browser?". When's the last time 350,000 people bought a web
| browser?
|
| We've made our own bed in this one, the second folks saw that
| Internet Explorer was free; and that killed the original Mozilla
| browser -- that -- by the way -- I happily paid for.
|
| If you want an internet where you're not the product, then that's
| an internet where the business models have to change, and the
| customer desire to pay for the software they use has to go up.
|
| And that still -- still -- does not alleviate the problem of
| capital needing to get started, which is only exacerbated by the
| Section 174 changes in the TCJA of 2017.
| karaterobot wrote:
| When I was a contractor, I worked on a project with this well-
| intended guy who wanted to make an app for people to store a
| persistent map of their movement over time using the GPS. On day
| one, he made it very clear--and I believed him--that a user's
| private data was sacrosanct. As the project wore on, never
| finding traction, and costing more and more money, I remember one
| of the last meetings I attended with him. He was trying to find
| new sources of revenue to keep the company alive, and he uttered
| the inevitable phrase: "well, we've got all this user data we
| could sell." That was one of those moments when you get a little
| more cynical, and since then I access as an axiom that every
| company will sell my data eventually, regardless of their
| promises. It's just a question of limiting their access to it,
| and being willing to switch to an alternative every once in a
| while.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| HN title: "Mozilla owns "information you input through Firefox"
|
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
|
| "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."
|
| This is a license to use, not ownership. If Mozilla owns the
| information then it does not need a license.
|
| Licenses to use information can be revoked, i.e., terminated.
| dang wrote:
| Good catch--thanks! I've put that more accurate quote in the
| title above (or rather, a shortened version that fits HN's 80
| char limit).
|
| Edit: merging into
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185909
|
| Earlier thread (in this case) was
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065, which had that
| title.
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| Mozilla really keeps making missteps.
| freediver wrote:
| What would complete the irony would be Google declaring they are
| abandoning ads in the age of AI :)
| jacksnipe wrote:
| Since facebook was fined for processing friend requests with
| foreigners on foreign servers, I feel like licenses like this are
| actually necessary for any product with _any_ remote services
| components to operate in the EU, with more jurisdictions to come
| suddenly and unpredictably.
| j45 wrote:
| This seems poorly worded, intentionally or not. Doesn't feel like
| the Mozilla I've known.
| jayelbe wrote:
| I find this so sad. I would gladly pay/donate to support Firefox,
| far in excess of however much money they would make from data
| mining and advertising. I am sure that enough people feel the
| same way to make it a viable model.
|
| Thunderbird raises more than $8mn a year in donations to support
| their development. Thunderbird's success has proven that this
| model would work.
| mikevin wrote:
| Sometimes I wish I had the kind of education that allows you to
| interpret Terms of Use, Privacy Notices and other legal
| mumbojumbo in a way that answers my questions. It's great
| practice if you like cryptic crosswords though.
| nonelog wrote:
| > Without it [the license], we couldn't use information typed
| into Firefox, for example.
|
| That is EXACTLY what we WANT: DON'T use information we type in
| Firefox!
|
| If that's a problem for you, let us pay you i.e. $5/month.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| I uninstalled Firefox this morning after reading about these sus
| af changes.
|
| Tried Librewolf and found it to be great, - No
| Pocket bullshit. - I forgot I had the start page set
| to blank only because Firefox was fixed on ruining it while
| forbidding using a custom one.
|
| Migrating took me 20m, and I'm glad I did it because it left be a
| backup of something that so far only Mozilla kept for me.
| - Exporting/Importing bookmarks takes 20s. (Ctrl-Shift-o,
| export/import). - Exporting passwords is simple
| (Preferences, search for passwords. Alternatively just go to
| about:logins). - I had many extensions to install, but
| the ones that need heavy customisation all had export/import.
| Migrating passwords was easy through a (totally not safe) csv
| file. - The only troublesome extension was Video
| Download Helper, but after re-running `vdhcoapp install` I
| figured I just needed to copy `~/.mozilla/native-messaging-
| hosts/` into `~/.librewolf/`.
|
| I'm kind of stuck with Android. I don't know of an alternative,
| but haven't spent time looking for one yet.
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