The screw-ups keep mounting like they want to be Google.
They (and we)'ve got to admit, the solution is not going to come from within their (managerial) ranks.
At this point I'd be happy to offer my services as a BDFL for Mozilla, at but a small fraction of the wages of any of their C-suites.
Google really needs to be broken up. They've become the Ma Bell of the internet.
https://thehackernews.com/2025/03/mozilla-updates-firefox-terms-again.html?m=1
Apparently they changed it due to backlash.
Glad they clarified. To me the "selling data being defined broadly" argument made sense in the context of Google paying them to be included as a search provider. Because there is an argument that Google paying Firefox, and then the user entering a search and that being sent to Google's servers could be legally seen as Mozilla selling data to Google.
They should clarify that then. Explain any and all situations that could be considered "selling user data" and explain what data that consists of. Then explain how to avoid it.
That shouldn't be hard.
Hm. Reading further in the article and since its not the first no-no.. I have doubts.
I don't like this but it's gonna take more for me to switch. I am very happy with Firefox for my use-case and workflow it works really well. However I think they are shooting themselves in the foot by starting to take away some of the most crucial advantages with Firefox compared to Chrome. I mean if both are awful for privacy then why use Firefox?
I see it said agian and agian. because its true. Firefox is one of, if not the best of the mainstream browsers. (Not included its many forks) but Mozilla is a horrible caretaker of it. Mozilla does not focus on firefox and they dont care/believe in it nearly as much as its users or devs who fork it.
The motivations of a company are extremely important, and has Mozilla does not care for a lightweight, good, privacy centric browser, the enshitification will and has corrupt firefox.
It's only a matter of time until it is as bad as chromium or flat out joins it.
Considering how critical a browser is these days.
I'm surprised there isn't a very popular Open-Source one that everyone is using.
It's because it's hard to maintain a browser. There's lots of protocols and engines and other moving pieces; I remember when web pages would render in Netscape but not Internet Explorer, for example.
We take for granted how seamless and ubiquitous the internet is, but there were lots of headaches as internet devs decided to adopt or include different users (or not).
And now, it would take a lot of effort and market upset to convince the capitalist overlords to include something new in their dev stack. The barrier to entry is monumentally high, so most people don't bother to try inventing something better.
Mozilla posted an update:
Update at 10:20 pm ET: Mozilla has since announced a change to the license language to address user complaints. It now says, "You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content."
I wonder how much this affects things if you’ve already gone through Firefox’s settings to max out privacy and turn off all telemetry.
I resisted switching to Librewolf because Firefox works great (including M365 in Linux at work) and seemed to have the options you’d want for privacy and security.
This doesn’t feel like an emergency, especially in a chrome/edge dominated world. But it’s back on the list of things to investigate transitioning away from.
Mozilla needs to understand that I don't want it to have my data to sell or not in the first place.
This whole thing does not matter if you are living in the US anyway become of the Third-party doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties have "no reasonable expectation of privacy in that information.
Anyone still using Firefox after this probably hasn't been keeping up with Mozilla's many controversies. If this is your first time here, I can see why you'd decide to overlook it. I did for a long time, but this is the final straw for me. Luckily, instead of building anything useful over the past decades, Mozilla leadership has been instead focused on enriching themselves. That means deleting my Mozilla account right now was easy.
I've now moved to LibreWolf, because I don't want to support Chromium's dominance, but if that project dies out I'll jump ship. It'll be a real shame if the world gets stuck with Chromium as the only viable browser, but it won't be my fault. It will be Mozilla leadership's fault.
Jump ship to what? It seems like going to Tor browser full time might be the answer?
I'm just not sure what the steps are from Librewolf to More private.
It makes me sad because I'm a donator and supporter to Mozilla - and have been for years. I truly believe the web should be open, free, and not for profit and there are great people at Mozilla which is why I hate seeing the leadership do things like this. I wish there was an active group that shared the same ideals, were ethical, and not full of transphobes and cryptobros that could take up the mantle and fund another fork like Librewolf.
Preferably would love that any group be a collective not a corporation.
my other comment is here about the acting CEO of Mozilla, Laura Chambers, and asking about potential connections to Musk and Thiel.
https://lemmy.world/comment/15382904
I just got an alert that I need to update my FF browser before March 14th. that's another date that keeps coming up.
March 14th is the
don't forget that the ides of march is march 15th, as well as March is named after Mars the God of War.
I'm no mystic, but symbolism is important to megalomaniacs.
anyone else know of other important technological or political events happening on March 14th?
In 1900 on March 14th the Gold Standard Act was ratified in America, forcing the dollar to be redeemable by the Treasury on demand for a fixed value in gold. It was abondoned in 1933 during the Great Depression (which really was not all that great from what I've read).
In 1943 Kraków Ghetto ceased to have prisoners. Less great than that depression.
1964 Jack Ruby was convicted of assassinating JFK.
1879 Einstein's birthday.
1883 Karl Marx's death.
It's pi day, so I'll probably be eating a nice pie that day.
Mmmm, pie. It's better than cake.
Which is better than death (relevant part at 4:44).
Eddie Izzard?
What. Could. Be. More. Surprising.
This is why I am an advocate for publicly-funded Internet, like how people fund NPR and BBC.
I don't blame Firefox because at the end of the day, they are still a business and need to cover the operating cost. I blame the system that we're in and the elites will tell you there is no other alternative.
I don't get how something is allowed to be labeled "free" when the terms of usage make you barter your data.
They can't just promise they "never will" and then get rid of it. People who used the service under the original agreement should still be able to claim that benefit since it was promising to never sell it.
I mean you could argue that them defaulting to Google search is already them selling your data. Google definitely pay them for that.
I don't quite understand what the backlash is here. The article is about FAQs on the Mozilla website. It seems reasonable that some people might interpret "sell" to be accepting money to set the default browser to Google. Clarifying that on their site seems fine. The FAQ was surely never legally binding.
Their 'Terms of Use' document is new as of Feb 26 AFAIK. Is that what people are upset by?
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)
So in other words we sell your data and get paid for it, and some countries won't let us lie about it.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
