AI Summary:
Overview:
- Mozilla is updating its new Terms of Use for Firefox due to criticism over unclear language about user data.
- Original terms seemed to give Mozilla broad ownership of user data, causing concern.
- Updated terms emphasize limited scope of data interaction, stating Mozilla only needs rights necessary to operate Firefox.
- Mozilla acknowledges confusion and aims to clarify their intent to make Firefox work without owning user content.
- Company explains they don’t make blanket claims of “never selling data” due to evolving legal definitions and obligations.
- Mozilla collects and shares some data with partners to keep Firefox commercially viable, but ensures data is anonymized or shared in aggregate.
What’s the best alternative on Mac?
You could try zen browser
It looks like Arc but built on Firefox’s engine? That’s sick. I’ll give it a look.
I downloaded it and signed into to Sync and i gotta be honest it’s a little half baked. I think I’ll stick with Firefox for now until it leaves beta.
Nah, it’s abandoned as the company turned to ai stuff
Are you referring to Arc or to Zen?
Arc. The browser company is continuing security updates, but has otherwise stopped all development
Zen had its latest release 5 days ago, and arc 4 days ago, so I have no idea what they’re talking about.
Arc. They are only continuing security updates and necessary maintenance. No more feature work, no more bug fixes.
Do you have a source for that? I can’t seem to find anything on their website, though judging by the past few release notes you’re absolutely right.
Edit: found this video. Kinda feel like this should be a big red banner on the front page though.
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Great, but a web browser still does not need terms of service. There’s no ongoing relationship between the user and the creator of the browser, at least, there shouldn’t be unless the user signs up for additional optional services.
It’s great if Mozilla wants to offer some optional services users can opt in to, and those services probably need terms. I use Firefox Sync, though I’ve started to reconsider that given the recent fuss. The browser itself? I’ll move to a fork first, and stop recommending Firefox to others.
Too late. I’ve already moved to another browser
Which one? There is literally nothing else.
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Zen, Librewolf, Waterfox, Mullvad Browser to name a few
Is mullvad chromium based?
No, Firefox
Nope, Firefox based. It’s basically Tor Browser w/o Tor.
There are so many Firefox forks, just try them out and pick you poison.
Since others have already commented some suggestions, I’d like to add Floorp.
I use it on desktop
A FOSS browser has and never will require collecting user data.
This should not happen at all.
Certain features certainly could be considered as doing that, such as:
- Firefox sync
- crash reporting
- add-on store
I certainly want those. And then there are others that I don’t want:
- telemetry
- studies
- AI
My understanding is that this change is primarily motivated by a recent law change in California that has a pretty broad definition of “selling user data” and this is less likely to be a fundamental change in how Mozilla operates. However, let’s see what they come back with.
That second list should also include
- Ads
Because ads in the search bar results are one of the things Mozilla cited as precipitating the need for ToS.
Is that a pocket thing? Because I disable pocket and changed the default search engine.
If they laid out precisely which features result in data collection by Mozilla and how to disable them, I’d be pretty happy with it. However, if they’re unilaterally collecting data and not really separating concerns, then I’ll need to find something else.
What do you think a browser does?
The browser manufacturer doesn’t need a license to my inputs to process them and give them to the server it’s supposed to give them to. If you type a text in Libre office, does it ask you for a license to the text in order to save it?
No, but that’s a local program processing and saving data entirely on your system. It’s a world of difference from what a web browser does, which is oversee a whole suite of protocols connecting you to remote servers and transmitting data back and forth in requests that build on and reference each other. With the complexity of modern web interactions, there’s a ton of reasons why a browser might need to store your data and share it with others, even ignoring profit-seeking motives.
And let’s remember that the last thing Mozilla got heat for was the introduction of a method to anonymize bulk user data for sharing & selling purposes, as opposed to the granular, extremely invasive tracking that 99% of websites are doing these days.
I see a company that needs to make a decent amount of money in a crazy competitive environment, that’s trying their best to do so in the way least destructive to user privacy and choice.
Not even the lemmy instance you’re on needs a license to your content, and it is stored there and displayed for the world to see. Why is that? Because storing and displaying your posts is the very thing you want it to do. That is the service it is providing for you, and you declare that you want it to do that by clicking “send”. They would need a license if they wanted to do anything else with your stuff, which doesn’t directly have to do with displaying your posts in the fediverse.
The browser is supposed to take my requests and inputs, carry them to the server that I’m talking to and bring back the answer. The mail doesn’t need a license to my letters. That only changes if they want to open them and do something I originally had not intended.
But you know who claims a license to your content? Meta. Because you’re the product there, not the costumer.
And let’s remember that the last thing Mozilla got heat for was the introduction of a method to anonymize bulk user data for sharing & selling purposes,
as opposedin addition to the granular, extremely invasive tracking that 99% of websites are doing these days.Ftfy. It’s never going to replace more invasive tracking and just constitutes yet another party collecting my data.
I see a company that needs to make a decent amount of money
Mozilla already makes enough money from passive investment income. They don’t need to make any money from Firefox at all (but they do, it’s from google). They also don’t need to pay their CEO 6 Million a year.
Edit: Typo
That’s good and I’m genuinely glad they’re trying to clarify it, but it proves yet again that their top management is out of touch with reality and their users: somebody (most likely more than one person actually) had to sign off on these changes and the message they sent out - this whole thing could have been avoided if they understood their users better (and/or if they actually cared nore about what users think).
Google funding allows them to be big and inefficient, which means a lot of tops paid well and thinking themselves fashionable FOSS leader people or something.
They can live without it. They’ll have to cut most of the organization and return to being an open project developing a web browser.
That doesn’t sound cool for people not doing useful work. Like me, I’ll get to my shit instead of typing comments.
Too late. That wasn’t a typo, Terms are going downhill from here. I’m gone.
We saw it with reddit and that place is fucked now. Seems no one can be content with their status, they all need more.
Too late for me personally, I’ve gone ahead and moved over to Zen.
Me looking at Mozilla like: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GHShUPtagAANgks.jpg
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does this affect any fork of firefox? Like floorp?
What’s the alternative for Android? Fuck Chrome I want to move off this shit onto something that actually gives half a shit about me.
Tor. Anything short is freely giving your data away. If you’re looking for something that isn’t based on Gecko or Chromium there is the DuckDuckGo browser, which is WebKit. I can’t attest to how good their privacy policy is though as I have no idea.
Tor Browser doesn’t include uBo (on Android at least) and their ad blocking is abysmal. Its great that no one can trace your IP but completely useless since it doesn’t do anything to block trackers.
Anything short is freely giving your data away.
Misinformation.
IronFox
Boy have i got a treat for you, Ironfox! the continuation of Mull
Will check it out, thanks.
Fennec on F-Droid, which is Firefox fork
Anyone have a decent Android alternative? Updated my phone last night and this morning got a notification that Firefox had full permissions for accessing my location data. I’d like to move away from Firefox before enshitification is in full swing.
I use Fennec
Righto, pop that on the list. Thanks 👍
I switched to waterfox. Looks pretty much the same, no issues so far.
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Try out Ironfox. It can be installed through F-Droid.
Dope, I’ll give it a go 👍
Did you give it to it?
It can be a pretty nice feature for using map-based apps in the browser.
I haven’t used such websites for a while and I don’t see Firefox in the recent users of the location API, even though I use Firefox Android all the time. (Info available in Android under Settings/Location.)
Absolutely not. There’s not a single app on my phone that I willingly give unrestricted access to my location data. At most I allow “while using the app” and have my phone set to ask for permission for background running.
People hate whenever Brave is mentioned… But when it comes to privacy, I have not regretted my decision to use it
I mean if you are already ok with using a Chrome reskin from a crypto ad company your standards are already set too low.
People who use Firefox are concerned that Firefox is slowly shifting into what Brave is now. Aka an ad company.
I swear to god Brave browser is a cult. People who are into it a really into pushing it. No, I don’t want your crypto-bro, ad company run, chrome reskin.
But you have no problem with the paid-for-by-Google, ad company influenced, whittle away at the few protections they used to have, browser?
This is literally better in every way.
This being said, better in every way does not mean good. It’s just hard to be worse than a crypto bro run, literal ad company, who’s browser is a reskin of chrome.
Hot off the presses, in addition to the CEO being queer-phobic, he literally is now ranting about how George Soros, and leftists are treating him unfairly.
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Waterfox if you are ok with getting it from the play store
IronFox is an option
Where do I get it? It’s neither on the playstore nor on Fdroid.
You can get the F-Droid repo from their GitLab or Github (they recommend Accrescent though)
Ironfox
I’m using Fennec.
Fennec is maintained by Mozilla lol
Is it? It seems to be maintained by a user named relan based out of Russia. It’s just a few scripts to build it for F-Droid and basically just removes some proprietary stuff. It’s not a fork, just a build script.
Straight from the Fdroid page (on the Fdroid Android app)
Yes, this is built from Mozilla’s sources, but AFAIK Mozilla doesn’t maintain this build script, and the build script strips out certain parts of Firefox and adds in others (e.g. logo). It’s not a fork of Firefox, it’s just a builder that replaces parts of Firefox.
So Mozilla doesn’t maintain Fennec, since Fennec is a separate build of Firefox, but they do maintain what Fennec is built from.
They have no business collecting any data in the first place. If I wanted my data collected I’d be using Chrome like everyone else. I’m not choosing to use their buggy ass inferior and slower browser for any of Mozilla’s services, I’m choosing it because I want to support non-Chromium browsers and regain my privacy.
There’s no point whatsoever to using Firefox if it’s just a worse Chrome.
Telemetry benefits everyone, knowing which features are getting used, knowing what parts are causing crashes… It lets developers target what to improve and fix instead of going in blind. I get that collecting data can be scary, because so far everyone has been busy selling that data. But there’s a reason why data is so valuable, if it’s properly handled and anonymized it benefits everyone using firefox.
if it’s properly handled and anonymized it benefits everyone using firefox
glub glub much?
There is no justification for opt-out telemetry data collection, and there is no proper handling of data obtained despite user pushback. Also, properly anonymizing large data sets is not as trivial as you think. Even “fully anonymized” data set, assuming everything’s possible’s been done, can lead to correlation when added with other data. Even “cohorts” can lead to the creation of an aggregate group with so few individuals that it basically boils down to individual tracking.
Why do you think people are so vocal about not letting any of this happens in the first time? It’s not for blind idealism. It’s basically because even a minimum waiver on “supposedly anonymous” data is a huge blow to your privacy. And some people care about that.
Besides, Mozilla’s been pushing for a shitton of features that are constantly blamed for Firefox becoming as bad as its competition, and constantly turned off/removed. If they cared even a tiny bit about user feedback, the last… 3, 5 years of decisions from Mozilla would have been very different. Feature usage telemetry is a joke to make people accept their bullshit; the only thing that influence feature development is management or very heavy pushback, and that happens in dev issues, not with telemetry feedback.
While they have to be careful, there can be reasonable ones to help what they do/stop doing.
Example, “x% of telemetry enabled users enable the bookmark bar”, not particularly useful for harmful purposes, but if it were 0.00%, then they know efforts accommodating the bookmark bar would be pointless. Not many users would go out of their way to say “I don’t use some feature I’m ignoring”, and telemetry is able to convey that data, so the developer is not guessing based on his preference.
That being said, the telemetry is so opaque that it’s hard to make an informed decision as to whether the telemetry in question is risky or not. Might be good to have some sort of accumulated telemetry data that you can click to review and submit, and have that data be actually human readable and to the point for salient points.
glub glub much?
That’s a nice way to start and end a discussion.
It’s exactly the level of discourse your misinformation deserved.
How convenient for you.
No, fuck that and quit bootlicking. Software makers did just fine without telemetry for decades; your supposed justification is nothing but a bullshit lazy excuse.
Software makers did just fine without telemetry for decades
They actually did not, almost every software out there is mining your information. Software developers rely on and need data, you can’t guess what people want. Whether it’s from studies, testers, surveys, or telemetry, developers need information about what users like, what they don’t, how they interact with the software… This is what makes data so valuable, and why businesses like Google can exist. Denying open source software telemetry is shooting yourself in the foot.
. Software developers rely on and need data, you can’t guess what people want.
Why would I want software developers (particularly web browser) to guess what I want? I will tell them what I want, otherwise they have no business serving it to me.
If I’m not offering that data, it means I don’t want you to have it. Simple as that.
I will tell them what I want
You might, but 99% of users will never take a step towards giving any feedback whatsoever.
Yes, which means they don’t want anything from them. Rather than seeing those people as nothing more than potential profit, just move on.
Yes, which means they don’t want anything from them.
And yet they’re using the application. Don’t you want the applications that you use to work better? This is what telemetry enables, the ability to give feedback without jumping through 10 hoops, creating an account, responding to a survey, or whatever other method you’re thinking of to give feedback.
I think it’d be less creepy if there was an easily accessible public dashboard displaying this telemetry. E.g. like counters showing how many people hide the bookmark bar. If you can instantly see what data your browser is sending in an easily digestible format (ie not a dump of JSON in a submenu), it’s easier to gain a quick understanding of the benefits vs minimal privacy tradeoffs.
But it really depends on trust: trust that they’re not collecting more than they claim, and trust that the data is properly anonymized. Mozilla has lost that trust.
It lets developers target what to improve and fix instead of going in blind.
I’m sure they’ll make do
Even if Firefox is selling your data, its still 10x better than chrome since they allow uBlock Origin. Fuck chrome and fuck ads
