this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Firefox maker Mozilla deleted a promise to never sell its users' personal data and is trying to assure worried users that its approach to privacy hasn't fundamentally changed. Until recently, a Firefox FAQ promised that the browser maker never has and never will sell its users' personal data. An archived version from January 30 says:

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.

That promise is removed from the current version. There's also a notable change in a data privacy FAQ that used to say, "Mozilla doesn't sell data about you, and we don't buy data about you."

The data privacy FAQ now explains that Mozilla is no longer making blanket promises about not selling data because some legal jurisdictions define "sale" in a very broad way:

Mozilla doesn't sell data about you (in the way that most people think about "selling data"), and we don't buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of "sale of data" is extremely broad in some places, we've had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).

Mozilla didn't say which legal jurisdictions have these broad definitions.

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[–] bizzle@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm about to get my tattoo removed wtf

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[–] parmesan@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Am I the only one here who's pretty much okay with this? I do wish they'd clarify exactly what they mean by "Mozilla doesn't sell data about you (in the way that most people think about 'selling data')," but having my anonymized data sold so that Mozilla can continue to operate (combined with Firefox being the best browser I've used in terms of both performance and flexibility - ability to install add-ons from sources outside of the Mozilla store, for example) - seems like a worthy tradeoff to me.

They also have an option to opt-out of data collection, which I do wish was opt-in instead, but with the way every other mainstream browser operates I'm just happy the option is there at all. Let me know if there's something I'm missing here though.

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

To generalise, just as Reddit is the neolib centrist hivemind and Facebook is the conservative boomer hivemind, Lemmy is some overlap of privacy/techy/ultrapolitical groups - so whenever you get this kind of news that is ultimately pretty mild and uncontroversial to most you get lots of Lemmings buttons pushed and what seems like an oversized reaction in the comments.

Is Firefox perfect? No. Is it still the best available mainstream browser option? Yes. And if the small groups that presently use it walk away and its tiny market share (~5%) declines to a point where Firefox becomes insolvent - well then browsers will be just a two-horse race between Google (Chromium) and Apple (WebKit). Every web spec and page will be beholden to the desires of those companies - I'm sure the same Lemmings will be complaining about that too, and by then it will be too late to realize what they've lost.

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[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

This is why I am an advocate for publicly-funded Internet, like how people fund NPR and BBC.

I don't blame Firefox because at the end of the day, they are still a business and need to cover the operating cost. I blame the system that we're in and the elites will tell you there is no other alternative.

[–] Solventbubbles@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Son of a bitch I just got back into Firefox.

[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] lustyargonian@lemm.ee 0 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Is there any android port?

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[–] birdiebop@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] AvailableFill74@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] ChonkaLoo@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't like this but it's gonna take more for me to switch. I am very happy with Firefox for my use-case and workflow it works really well. However I think they are shooting themselves in the foot by starting to take away some of the most crucial advantages with Firefox compared to Chrome. I mean if both are awful for privacy then why use Firefox?

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[–] squire3@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (4 children)

If Firefox is losing its footing as a privacy focused browser then where do we go? If your on Mac maybe Safari?

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[–] Zink@programming.dev 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wonder how much this affects things if you’ve already gone through Firefox’s settings to max out privacy and turn off all telemetry.

I resisted switching to Librewolf because Firefox works great (including M365 in Linux at work) and seemed to have the options you’d want for privacy and security.

This doesn’t feel like an emergency, especially in a chrome/edge dominated world. But it’s back on the list of things to investigate transitioning away from.

[–] rocky1138@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yep. It stinks. We'll see if it was just a fart and it'll go away or if they crapped and we'll have to jump ship.

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[–] zer0bitz@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (3 children)

So sad. I have used Firefox since 2006. Today I removed it for good from all of my devices. So long old friend. I cant wait for Ladybird to release.

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[–] Viri4thus@feddit.org 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Women CEOs are as shit as Male CEOs. Who would have thunk the war of the sexes was a cause dangled in front of the bougies so the elite could parasitise free from fear of popular revolt huh?

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I read somewhere that women CEO are often chosen when the company is declining or about to fail, as a way to take the blame off from themselves. So your comment seems kind of misogynistic and saying women are just as bad, but you are not accounting for the misogyny in the corporate world. In many cases a male dominated BOD often use women as a scapegoat for their failings, musks twitter for example, he hides behind a woman to take criticism off himself. Women also earn significantly less than men in the same position. Another is YouTube's Late ceo. Theranos had Holmes, but if you look further she was chosen to be the face by a male BOD

[–] Viri4thus@feddit.org -1 points 1 week ago

Sex, gender, sexual orientation, skin colour are red herrings used to distract the people from the fact they have a boot on their neck. The replies to my comment are yet another evidence people are OK licking the boot as long as the party is "insert preference here". The problem is not particular to any of the aforementioned classes, the problem is the incentive structure is broken and the fiduciary duty is enshrined in law rather than good governance and long term sustainability. Firefox is just another evidence that cheerleading for a CEO because of intrinsic characteristics is a folly.

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