Mozilla responds after terms of usage, privacy policy change
www.theregister.com
Open source browser maker ties itself up in legalese and explanations

The answer to “what is Firefox?” on Mozilla’s FAQ page about its browser used to read:

The Firefox Browser is the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit that doesn’t sell your personal data to advertisers while helping you protect your personal information.

Now it just says:

The Firefox Browser, the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit, helps you protect your personal information.

In other words, Mozilla is no longer willing to commit to not selling your personal data to advertisers.

A related change was also highlighted by mozilla.org commenter jkaelin, who linked direct to the source code for that FAQ page. To answer the question, “is Firefox free?” Moz used to say:

Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it, and we don’t sell your personal data.

Now it simply reads:

Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it.

Again, a pledge to not sell people’s data has disappeared. Varma insisted this is the result of the fluid definition of “sell” in the context of data sharing and privacy.

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.eeEnglish
      38·
      2 days ago
      • Mozilla is sliding down a slippery slope to enshitification; but they’re still near the top of that slide. The bad stuff hasn’t actually come yet. So Firefox is still top-tier in the short term.
      • In the medium term, we can look towards a fork such as Librewolf or Waterfox.
      • And in the long term, we’ll probably turn to a new project using Ladybird or Servo.
    • wittycomputer@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      Librewolf, degoogled chromium, private windows. If you don’t want your data to be sold, don’t give out your data.

        • TheChickenOfDoom@lemm.eeEnglish
          101·
          1 day ago

          Which happen to remove all telemetry, ads, reporting, etc. You know, the reason we don’t want to use vanilla Firefox.

          Use Librewolf. Please don’t use any damned Chromium-based trash.

          • Daegalus@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            11·
            1 day ago

            I’ll stop using Chromium-based trash once Firefox devs stop acting all holier than thou and implement WebUSB and WebSerial instead of some vague notion they are protecting me from myself by not implementing it.

            • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
              4·
              15 hours ago

              WebUSB isn’t a web standard and there isn’t a spec for it. If it becomes a standard then they might. However, it is terrible for privacy and security.

              • Daegalus@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                11·
                3 hours ago

                https://wicg.github.io/webusb plenty of spec here and a draft to become web standard.

                It’s up to me to decide what is sufficient secure and private for me, I don’t have the same threat model as others. It’s the same bullshit line Firefox throws around.

                There is a reason why Firefox is constantly losing adoption. People want things to work.

                They can easily add it behind a flag until it’s ready, but those that need it can use it in it’s current form. I need it for keyboards and mice to be configurable on Linux. Many hardware manufacturers are starting to use it to make cross platform tools for their prepherial hardware. I’m not gonna wait for Firefox overlords to deem it “safe enough” by their whims. They don’t even have a framework for how to qualify something is safe. It’s just at the personal preferences of Mozilla devs.

                They have implemented plenty of things that were drafts, and posed just as many security or privacy issues.

      • bluewing@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        That isn’t ready for common use by most people until there they offer binaries for easy installation.