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Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises to not sell their data
- booberry 2y agoWell, what do we move to now?
- chgs 2y agoThere are three browsers. Chrome, Firefox and safari The rest are basically skins. How much does “brave” contribute to chromium? How much does librefox contribute to the core Firefox engine?
- kennysoona 2y agoSome offer functionality not found in the main browser they fork from, like Waterefox having the ability to share normal, private and tor tabs all in one browser window.
- homebrewer 2y agoVivaldi does quite a bit of upstream development (for their team size), and it is as close to the original Opera as you're going to get. It is proprietary, though (but their history w.r.t to treating their users right is better than everybody else, except maybe Apple).
- Dotnaught 2y agoBrave disables or removes a number of Chromium features: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-%28features-we-disable-or-remove%29 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
- deadbabe 2y agoBrave
- gear54rus 2y agoIt does not suppport extensions on mobile, bascially useless at being a user agent in the true sense of the word.
- dwedge 2y agoIs that the same Brave that injected their crypto functionality into the HTML of sites downloaded over HTTPS, like Twitter? I don't trust them
- econ 2y agoIt's fast tho, really fast
- hasperdi 2y agoChrome is also fast
- econ 2y agoI have some shamefully bloated webpages and some rather low end computes. I don't know why or how and realize it is highly anecdotal. Just sharing my surprise. I don't have any extensions. (if you do add things to chrome that are native in brave I imagine it to work slower) Perhaps it is my limited ram that holds back (the more memory hungry) chrome. Not sure how regularly calling home affects chrome.
- AshamedCaptain 2y agoBrave's entire business model is pretty explicitly about selling your data for targeted advertisements. I find it unreasonable to even suggest Brave as an alternative if your concern with Mozilla is the "selling your data" language. Also re MitM'ing for crypto mining: I was never in favor of pushing Brendan out of Mozilla for being a supposed right-wing nut, but I am not surprised either to see that, given free reign, he _is_ a right-wing nut.
- 2y ago
- magicalhippo 2y agoBeing discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43229267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43229267
- mcherm 2y agoOne of the good things about this article is that it linked to a significant number of Firefox forks that are being offered.
- mre 2y agoIf you're looking for a Firefox fork, a couple of options come to mind: - Floorp (https://floorp.app https://floorp.app) - Zen (https://zen-browser.app https://zen-browser.app) - Mullvad Browser (https://mullvad.net/browser https://mullvad.net/browser) - LibreWolf (https://librewolf.net https://librewolf.net) - WaterFox (https://www.waterfox.net https://www.waterfox.net) Besides that, there's also Brave and perhaps Chromium.
- Bancakes 2y agoSpecifically, ungoogled chromium
- horsawlarway 2y agoDefinitely this over default chromium.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y agoDo any run ublock?
- einpoklum 2y agoI'm using UnGoogled Chromium right now, and it seems not to be willing to install uBlock Origin. You can use uBlock Origin Lite. Ironically, The author of uBlock originally recommended switching to Firefox; I wonder if he'll want to change that recommendation now...
- Semaphor 2y ago> I wonder if he'll want to change that recommendation now... The recommendation is because Firefox is the only browser running full uBo (and even before uBo on FF had slightly more features than Chrome). Nothing changed there.
- 2y ago
- ekianjo 2y agoHere are alternatives listed here, all FOSS: https://boilingsteam.com/poll-trust-in-firefox-mozilla-is-gone/ https://boilingsteam.com/poll-trust-in-firefox-mozilla-is-go...
- HackerThemAll 2y agoNowhere. The whole panic is just attention. Nothing's gonna change wrt to your data at Mozilla, especially that you can disable *everything* straight from settings and/or about:config.
- cwillu 2y agoThey stopped letting you access about:config on mobile on the normal releases a long time ago.
- moho 2y agoYou can access about:config on mobile FF (all versions, including release channel) at this very intuitive URL: chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml
- seqizz 2y agoUntil one of the next minor updates
- mglvsky 2y agoI was going to suggest Ladybird, but it isn't released yet :)
- lawn 2y agoIt looks like I'll be stuck with Firefox until a Servo browser or Ladybird matures... Which unfortunately isn't anytime soon.
- Xelbair 2y agoProbably Librewolf, or other firefox clone sadly. I got burned by waterfox in the past, so i'm still reluctant.
- tofof 2y agoCan you explain what burned you? I imagine many of us are trying to sift through the raft of alternatives, and waterfox is a frequent mention, so data about pros and cons is valuable.
- kristjank 2y agoFor what it's worth, Waterfox has issues with the mozilla addon store at the moment. I was planning on Firefox Sync'ing everything over to my waterfox install, then deleting my account, but it's unable to install and reconfigure my shitload of plugins I'm using.
- excalq 2y agoI've noticed that it's trivial to install addons directly from their xpi packages on GitHub release pages.
- Xelbair 2y agoif i remember right, it was ages ago, they were bought out by 'advertiser friendly' company. I'm as advertiser hostile as i can be as i find that whole industry to be a cancer upon this earth.
- EasyMark 2y agoi've been using floorp for about a year with no issues other than the rare "chrome only" pages, for those I just use vivaldi. Floorp with sideberry and ublock is a pretty nice setup.
- agilob 2y agoDo not need to move anywhere. This is literally a non-issue started for fun by tiktok idiots who didn't read the ToS. Nothing in Mozillas behaviour is changing, they had to reword the ToS for legal reasons. https://old.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1j0n4un/firefox_and_tos/ https://old.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1j0n4un/firefox_...
- BoiledCabbage 2y agoThe reddit post you link does not support your argument. Your should read past the initial post to the comments where what your say is refuted.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago> Nothing in Mozillas behaviour is changing, they had to reword the ToS for legal reasons. The legal reasons appear to be that they are and/or have been and/or will sell user data: > In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms...
- nosioptar 2y agoLynx is the only clear choice. It doesn't sell your data. It doesn't advertise other services like Pocket. It doesn't need an ad blocker. Its immune to JavaScript exploits.
- robmsmt 2y agoIn another alternative dimension, the Firefox guys 10 years ago would have capitalized on what their users wanted which is mostly around privacy and not being Google. Instead we got pocket, a re-hashed VPN and a bunch of privacy-degrading changes which slowly erode trust.
- mananaysiempre 2y agoFor what it’s worth, as a Pocket user from before it got bought by Mozilla, it’s only gotten worse since then. First the mobile apps lost the ability to show full web pages (“Web View”) while offline, which was basically the whole point for me originally. Now the Share Link button has stopped sharing the actual link and instead uses a redirection service (pocket.co) presumably so that Pocket/Mozilla can track you.
- AshamedCaptain 2y agoI am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke Mozilla to remove this feature. I agree with you was the entire reason I used Pocket (literally replacing AvantGo for me). Now Pocket is basically yet another ... web portal? advertisement platform? social network? I do not know how to describe what it is now, other than useless.
- michaelcampbell 2y ago> I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke nice... thanks, Mr. Babbage.
- glenstein 2y agoPocket still saves articles offline. It just saves them in article view. Which is the same as what Instaaper does. I just checked my phone and it has 1.07 gigabytes of articles saved for offline reading. I don't recall it ever saving web pages in web view (though maybe you used to be able to see them offline when you used the premium plan, but now the premium plan doesn't save the WebView offline? I'm not interested enough in paying for it to find out so all I have is guestimation.). So they do save, but they save as article view and not the webpage itself. Which is the same as the other services.
- josteink 2y agoMaybe I’m missing something important, but why would a locally installed application running on your own machine, open source or not, require to have «terms of use» in the first place? Mozilla seems truly lost. Edit: said more clearly, the outrage against the contents of the “terms of use” is misguided. The outrage should be over there actually being a “terms of use” in the first place.
- braiamp 2y agoBecause law sucks. Every open source application has language that says about the same thing.
- drpossum 2y agoThat's patently untrue. There are plenty of open source projects that do not have "about the same thing" in their terms of use and in fact, just a simple license with easily understandable and permissive terms. Check out Creative Commons for example, and compare it to what Mozilla asks, if you're interested in learning more. You'll find they're very different.
- braiamp 2y agoEvery open source has a disclaimer that says that they are not liable of the usage of the software. This is saying that they collect data, yes, but are only liable in case they collect data that you, the user, hasn't explicitly told them to collect, otherwise, they are not liable, because their product would only do as you intend to use it. Mozilla literally agrees with everyone that this law is a good law. Their services on the other hand, has language that services on the same category has, like VPN where you have language that says that you wouldn't do something illegal with it.
- drpossum 2y agoI'm convinced by this and your other recent posts you're just trolling at this point. (or you're beholden to a company that's forced you to think this way and what Mozilla is doing is fine and normal)
- ekianjo 2y agoYou can see here the extent of the loss of trust with a survey (700 answers+): https://boilingsteam.com/poll-trust-in-firefox-mozilla-is-gone/ https://boilingsteam.com/poll-trust-in-firefox-mozilla-is-go...
- squigz 2y agoYou can't see anything here... A survey like this is always going to skew heavily toward people who are agitated enough to go and answer it - particularly when you preface it with a biased post about the issue you're asking people about...
- G_o_D 2y agoBrave as a browser sucks !!! Most sites dont load on it Most sites appear blank brave cannot render unless repeatedly refresh like in 90s Even with 60 tabs opened in android it lags as hell, both opening and switching tabs takes 30s to 1min or more No reliability over sync, lost my bookmarks many time cannot easily run bookmarklets and much more Its now just a hunk of paid crypto AI VPN servicea
- jqpabc123 2y agoJust follow the money. Mozilla's primary customer is Google. All the executives and developers at Mozilla are being paid very well by Google. Ignoring this influence is to deny the economic reality that you live in and enables your own existence. You might as well try to deny their TOS were just changed --- apparently in order to avoid liability for privacy claims that wouldn't withstand legal scrutiny.
- gitaarik 2y agoSo why is this only happening now
- braiamp 2y agoThis is yet again a nothing burger. They had to change that definition because in California "selling" means "[...] releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring [...]" in exchange for “monetary” or *“other valuable consideration.”*. You can see user collected data publicly, and use said data to improve Firefox the browser, that would be argued that is a valuable consideration. The user collected data are things like about:studies, the new tab page, Firefox Addons, and anything listed here https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report This is literally language that had to change to describe Mozilla's actions in line with California's law.
- Kelvin506 2y agoIf so, their execution of that change is terrible. They could have explicitly clarified things, replacing "sell" with more expansive language that would maintain the explicit commitment to user privacy. But instead they changed their words to sound like Microsoft and Google, two notorious privacy violators, and have since only made it worse by only giving us circular explanations.
- rustc 2y agoUnless they're running ads for other companies without taking any money, they are indeed selling data: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms... > In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our Privacy Notice.
- plagiarist 2y agoAnd that's what people are objecting to. The reason they need to clarify their terms "in accordance with California law" is because it is a good law, not because they have done nothing wrong.
- 2y ago
- throw912435187 2y agoDoes the Firefox in Debian also spy on you? There is no user agreement to click on at least, so it would be illegal (in the EU it would be illegal even if you click "yes", because terms like that would be thrown out by courts).
- booleandilemma 2y agoI switched to LibreWolf yesterday. Seems fine so far. https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ I'm still not sure what to do about my phone though.
- _vqgb 2y agoI'd recommend brave, pretty decent I would say
- EasyMark 2y agonot if you like features of firefox like sync, containers, sideberry, manifest v2 (ublock origin), etc.
- rasmus-kirk 2y agoMull, it's like librewolf, but for Firefox-android: https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix
- moho 2y agoMull has been officially discontinued by DivestOS back in December, along with most of their other projects. A fork by the name IronFox emerged but it's too new to know whether it's a real contender.
- yndoendo 2y agoJust tried Zen Browser, it's interface maybe clean but user experience is very not zen. It was frustrating to find out how to remove all the Google and WhatsApp from he default layout. Left / right tab system is find but it needs a fly out/in button like IDEs have to terminal / console to compact the view. Looks like LibreWolf is the one to transition to.
- Kelvin506 2y agoMozilla seems to have forgotten that they survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly privacy-focused. They've since stopped being that. Even if they are still tacitly privacy-focused, that's not good enough anymore. We assume Mozilla is now just another ad-pandering jackwagon because that is the only safe assumption when presented with the facts: a major change in management, followed by removal of "we won't sell your data" across all of their marketing. Their userbase is arguably mostly people who put up with browser disparity for the sake of peace of mind about their data. That type of user will abandon Firefox the same way we did Chrome.
- braiamp 2y agoMozilla being explicitly privacy focused didn't get them any effective brownie points. The only thing that saves them is that they are the only viable competitor so, Google, via Chromium has to support them financially so that they don't fail. This is literally the I support my competitor so the argument that I'm a monopoly looks weaker. (BTW, Google practices around Chrome were anti-competitive)
- ForTheKidz 2y agoThis is nonsense: firefox was and remains a better browser than chrome just in terms of usability. If you ever believed that a browser maker cared about "privacy" I have a bridge to sell you. I mean, just look at their business model. Enshittification or bankruptcy was always the future.
- CamouflagedKiwi 2y agoHow so? The two are basically indistinguishable to me in terms of UI, their layouts are almost entirely identical. If anything I think Firefox has become more like Chrome over time. Don't really disagree otherwise though.
- morsch 2y agoI'm using both every day. Firefox has better adblocking and better integration of tree style tabs. Both provided via extensions. I also prefer Firefox Sync to whatever Google has, though given Mozilla's trajectory it'll be a toss up sooner or later.
- metalman 2y agoMozilla has been told to shed users. The reasons for that are simple, in order not to face racketiering and monopoly prosecutions, there needs to be a plausible "competitor" for the monopoloists to point to,but since there realy is no difference between an internet browser and a full blown OS, they cant let things get out of hand. So all the things have to keep breaking and changing, unless the user base becomes large, relevant and aware. Whats should have them terrified is that the whole alternative software eco system, could be wiped out, leaving no option but to close there grip all the way.
- seqizz 2y agoStill waiting for a fork from core and/or old devs. Will take few more enshittification attempts I assume.
- braiamp 2y agoThey will face the same issues Mozilla is facing if they ever want to collect user data. Also, they will probably be financially supported by Google because Google do not want the argument of monopoly to have hold.
- aborsy 2y agoAlso, Firefox Send, an actually useful feature, was discontinued.
- kristjank 2y agoI will write this for posterity just that the general sentiment does not go unnoticed. It's hard to keep defending the company I convinced most of my undecided-but-tech-savvy friends to switch to after the Manifest API debacle. Mozilla has, in my eyes, become an advertising-adjacent company. Data collection for advertising is just as indefensible as working on face recognition for kamikaze drones. Mozilla has acquired my patronage through perceived support for these values, and this step back has prompted me to cancel my existing and future subscriptions to Mozilla services I use.
- Tepix 2y agoMozilla is an epic management failure. I've never heard anything good about their management i think. And I've been using Firefox since its very beginnings.
- methou 2y ago[flagged]
- whamlastxmas 2y agoI’m pretty sure Firefox doesn’t use chromium? Also I don’t see any problem selling a VPN. I want one anyway and it’s a nice way to support Firefox. Also maybe a stretch to call them an ad company. They are now recently in the ad business having acquired an ad company. But that’s like calling Microsoft an ad company.
- crmi 2y agoFirefox does not use chromium. (For now anyway...)
- methou 2y agoYou are right, quantum seems decent and based on Servo. However I can't edit the post already. Two less reasons to dump Firefox then. Unlike Microsoft, Mozilla happens to be a smaller company than M$ with Firefox being their biggest offering, and they actually started trying to sell ads[0]. ---- [0]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/
- whamlastxmas 2y agoMicrosoft also sells ads is my point
- dimal 2y agoTime for a hard fork. Or is it better to double down on the upcoming alternatives like Servo and Ladybug? None of them seem close to being ready though.
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]
- hedora 2y agoI looked into donating to Mozilla, and (as always) the first question I asked was “what will this be spent on?” It turns out it wouldn’t go to software development, so I did not donate: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2024/article/financing-an-open-internet-mozillas-path-forward/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2024/a... Even worse, they’re spending the revenue they do get in wildly irresponsible ways. The AI initiative makes no sense. Currently, dozens of industry leading groups are doing a great job converting unlimited Chinese govt grants, monopoly rents, and VC money into open infrastructure and open weights Targeted advertising is fundamentally unethical, regardless of whether it respects privacy. Examples: - A friend struggled with prescription drug addiction and repeatedly relapsed due to targeted ads. - Entire industries are built on targeting people with gambling problems. - Companies like Cambridge Analytica explicitly target mentally ill people to change election outcomes and dismantle democracies. Anyway, I wish they’d spin off Firefox and related stuff (Rust made sense, I think FirefoxOS did too), and abandon the rest of their “mission”.
- jonkoops 2y agoI really wish they would do to Firefox what they did to Thunderbird, which is to spin it off into its own thing so it can stand independently. I want to support Firefox, but I do not feel comfortable donating to the Mozilla foundation. Firefox should just do a Wikipedia style beg button once a year and be transparent on where the money is being spent.
- aeve890 2y ago>Companies like Cambridge Analytica explicitly target mentally ill people to change election outcomes and dismantle democracies. What's not that years ago? Also wdym with targeting mentally ill people to dismantle democracies? Last thing I read about that was a FB api abuse to collect user data but nothing about targeting a specific demographic
- jonwest 2y agoI think the sentiment was that the mentally ill would be more susceptible to misinformation.
- RainyDayTmrw 2y agoHaving observed the trajectory of Mozilla since the Internet Explorer days, I am saddened and reminded of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy[1], which seems especially apt here. While Mozilla has become increasingly irrelevant in the eyes of its users and fans, apparently it is still quite lucrative for those at the center of its bureaucracy[2]. What's extra sad is that Firefox is clearly a valuable public good, which seems fated to go down with the rest of this rotten ship. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_iron_law_of_bureaucracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_ir... [2]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y agoHow hard is it to fork an open source project?
- wtallis 2y agoForking the Firefox code base is easy, at first. Forking the Mozilla Foundation to keep browser development going long-term is hard.
- kernal 2y agoHopefully the people that convinced their friends and family to switch to Firefox are doing the right thing and making amends for their mistake.