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

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26244492

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.

  • @[email protected]
    21•1 day ago

    It’s not hard to define “sell,” Varma, and I’m sure you don’t want to do it, because the definitions aren’t flattering. Here’s the Miriam Webster definition:

    1: to deliver or give up in violation of duty, trust, or loyalty and especially for personal gain : betray —often used with out

    sell out their country

    2a(1): to give up (property) to another for something of value (such as money)

    2a(2): to offer for sale

    2b: to give up in return for something else especially foolishly or dishonorably

    sold his birthright for a mess of pottage

    2c: to exact a price for

    sold their lives dearly

    3a: to deliver into slavery for money

    3b: to give into the power of another

    sold his soul to the devil

    3c: to deliver the personal services of for money

    4: to dispose of or manage for profit instead of in accordance with conscience, justice, or duty

    sold their votes

    • @[email protected]
      1•6 hours ago

      Louis Rossmann went over this in a video recently, and has a big wiki article about it here. Here’s a relevant snippet from that wiki page:

      The CCPA defines “selling data” as:

      “Sell,” “selling,” “sale,” or “sold,” means selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by the business to another business or a third party for monetary or other valuable consideration.[16]

      Search Engine Partnerships (Google, Bing, Yandex, etc.): Mozilla’s largest revenue source comes from deals with search engines like Google, which pay Mozilla to be Firefox’s default search provider.[17]

      These deals involve sending search query data to search partners. Under the CCPA, if Mozilla transmitted search data in exchange for financial compensation, this could be classified as a “sale of data.” This is a practice that Mozilla had already been openly taking part in.

      Make of that what you will, but that sounds like reasonable justification to make the language more vague to CYA.

      • @[email protected]
        2•5 hours ago

        I appreciate the extra information. Basing our responses on facts is always the best way forward.

        But that just brings up another issue: why aren’t they being more transparent about that? Why hide behind obtuse explanations? I’m not saying you’re wrong at all, but there’s clearly a disconnect between the leadership and the users, because they don’t seem to care to ensure people can easily understand what it is they mean.

        And that’s all assuming they’re still mostly on the users’ side, which I’m no longer fully convinced is the case. It’s great that that wiki exists, but they also bring up the insufficient clarity from Mozilla, and clarity shouldn’t be coming from a third party anyway.

        It’s a mess, and if Mozilla can’t give us straight answers, then it’s not a company I can trust or recommended by virtue of the fact that they can’t even clear that extremely low bar.

        • @[email protected]
          2•5 hours ago

          why aren’t they being more transparent about that?

          Idk, Hanlon’s Razor?

          Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

          They have a history of really crappy communications. That, plus how much they spend on “admin” (like 30% of the org spending) tells me they could just be largely incompetent. Add to that the chaos around an interim CEO, and I think you have the recipe of epic-scale goofs.

          But the opposite perspective of them trying to sneak in a shift to Mozilla’s direction is certainly reasonable as well. We don’t have enough info to determine which it actually is.

          So yeah, I’m not saying anyone should or shouldn’t trust Mozilla. I’m not going to make any rash decisions and I’ll give them a chance to clarify. But maybe you don’t feel comfortable with that. As Rossmann said in his video, if you want to play it safe, switch to LibreWolf, it’s a drop-in replacement (can still use Firefox Sync) and isn’t bound by Firefox’s TOS/EULA. Maybe go as far as to self-host the Sync server (totally feasible). In fact, I’m planning to do that anyway because I like to control my data.

          • @[email protected]
            1•4 hours ago

            We don’t have enough info to determine which it actually is.

            And it’s this that has me personally erring on the side of distrust. There’s a global shift among many organizations who see value in falling in line behind various authoritarian regimes (often under the pretense of “ensuring continued operation”), and I don’t have the luxury of skilled lawyers on retainer or goon squads who can fight for my rights.

            • @[email protected]
              2•4 hours ago

              And that’s totally fair. I’m lazy, so I’m going to give them a couple weeks to convince me they’re not turning evil, after which I’ll reconsider my options.

              That said, I’ll probably stick to Firefox tech though. If I switch, it’ll probably be to Mullvad on desktop and IronFox on mobile, but I recently had to switch from Mull on mobile to Fennec because the dev killed the project. That kinda sucked, and I didn’t notice until a month or two later, so I was unpatched for that period. I’d really like to avoid that, so I’m hesitant in switching to another. fork run by a hobbyist.