this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Mozilla’s New Terms of Use are out of step with Firefox’s Direct Competition (www.quippd.com)
submitted 1 week ago by yoasif@fedia.io to c/firefox@fedia.io
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On Wednesday, Mozilla introduced legal updates to users of Firefox, and something feels off. I read, and re-read the new Terms of Use and while much of it reads like standard boilerplate from any tech company, there’s a new section that is unexpected:

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[–] vaguerant@fedia.io 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've been following this story for the last couple of days, and I disagree. For one thing, most users don't consider a web browser's job to be "sending anything to someone's service"; it's local software that runs on your machine. There's no reason for somebody else to gain a license to the things you create on your own computer just because you created it inside a specific piece of software, but these Firefox terms are written extremely broadly, such that Mozilla would have a license to use this post I'm writing right now if I happened to type it into Firefox (for reference, I did not).

Besides which, there is additional context here like the many changes made in this pull request (16018). This PR removes a whole bunch of language saying that Mozilla doesn't sell your data, implying that they're either about to start selling the data you put in via Firefox, or at the very least that they're open to it. Here's all the parts that were removed by the above-linked PR:

Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data.

Does Firefox sell your personal data? Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.

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.

Is Firefox free? 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.

All of this taken together can really only mean that

[–] troed@fedia.io 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For one thing, most users don't consider a web browser's job to be "sending anything to someone's service"

What happens when you type something in the address bar? The days where that just told the browser to go to a URL are long gone.

[–] vaguerant@fedia.io 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Certainly, but there's a couple of problems with that line of thinking.

Firstly, "When you upload or input information through Firefox" is far more broad than covering the specific things you type into the address bar. That language covers pretty everything you can possibly do in a web browser. Every link you click, every social media post, every file upload is information input through Firefox. Certainly, you can argue that Firefox is being exceedingly broad just in case they expand the types of information they collect about you, but the terms as written now already give them license to everything.

Returning to the address bar, browsers traditionally send what you type into the address bar to a search engine, not to the author of the web browser (obviously discounting the situation where those are the same people, e.g. Microsoft with Edge & Bing and Alphabet with Chrome & Google). Mozilla doesn't offer a search engine or any sort of live search facility. The things you type into the address bar are (optionally) sent to the search provider of your choosing, whether that's Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo or Dogpile. What good reason is there for Mozilla to receive that information?

[–] troed@fedia.io 8 points 1 week ago

Legalese is always written broadly. As with absolutely everything that touches on IP the ones that yell the loudest are the ones that understand the subject the least.

browsers traditionally send what you type into the address bar to a search engine, not to the author of the web browser

The search bar doesn't say that will happen, so what legal right does the makers of Firefox have to suddenly send what you type there to some other third party service? You know, that "input information through Firefox".

That's what the license covers. You giving them that right. You don't need to agree with this, but that's how it's done - legally.