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.
In Firefox, type about:config in address bar, search for “sponsored” and “telemetry” and set all the paremeters you see from TRUE to FALSE. Done.
We shouldn’t have to do workarounds like that in the first place. It’s getting to be like the Stockholm syndrome people have about Windows abuses. I didn’t put up that shit, and I’m not gonna put up with this either.
I’d be more worried about how long that flag is going to work. And how long is it going to take us to realize the flag isn’t working.
Seems insane that even after disabling all related options in the main settings GUI, there are still like two dozen things enabled in about:config.
some are subcomponents of the main disabled feature. i checked this on my browser which was only modified by GUI, and nothing i saw ‘enabled’ was actually enabled, but instead a subfeature of what I had disabled.
How about on mobile?
Soo… where do we go now? What open source alternative exists that is on the side of its users?
Just keep using Firefox. Nothing in the code has changed, and if it does you can switch to forks. You all are evangelizing about how important FOSS is to prevent this exact scenario and yet you keep switching browsers for no need at all.
Note: I love Foss, I just think this is an overreaction
Oh sure, but browsers are an entirely different beast.
Eventually, they’ll take it closed source, now I know what you’re thinking “Then one of the forks will just become the dominant one!”
But here’s the thing, the browser engine is very complicated just to keep up with. The W3C spec that all engines must follow is thousands of pages long. So all those forks will wither and die once the engine has been cut off from upstream updates.
None of those forks touch the engine as-is
Do tell how something like Zen or Ladybird has a better chance at doing so. It would be better if instead of this fragmentation the Zen and Ladybird would work in a Firefox fork.
how something like Zen
Zen is a Firefox fork.
Ladybird has some serious backing and employed developers working on their engine and has been worked on for years (Ladybird started life as the SerenityOS browser)
And even after all that time and money, it’s still not even ready for general use. Their roadmap has them having a public release ready in 2028 iirc
And fragmentation? Really? LMAO there needs to be some competition in browser engines, if there was we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
There are only 2 modern, open source and fully working engines. Chromium and FF, that’s not fragmentation, that’s a duopoly
I mean, FOSS doesn’t prevent this on its own. We should probably all switch to LW and try to keep an eye that those telemetry settings don’t become disabled upstream.
Also of concern would be anyone using Firefox accounts and sync.
Librewolf
Ladybird looks promising.
Depends on where you stand on misogyny and transphobia.
I feel out of the loop on this one. Is there a particular individual on the project that this is about, or is this a company policy issue?
Zen Browser
said Ajit Varma, veep of Firefox Product
Pack up your shit, and get the FUCK out. You’re a fucking disgrace.
Orion is much better. Vote with your computing power.
Man! I’ve been out of touch for just a few weeks. I just switched from Mull to IronFox a few weeks ago. I use FF sync. I use LibreFox on my PCs.
This fight against surveillance capitalism is exhausting…
Edit: I’m more awake now. LW strips out tracking and dumb features (like PPA), buy I dont know if IF does the same. In short: Anyone using LW is still fine.
On your edit, how do you know this?
Edit: I’m more awake now. LW strips out tracking and dumb features (like PPA), buy I dont know if IF does the same. In short: Anyone using LW is still fine.
Another year another browser to avoid. It’s an endless cycle…
Given that this is a privacy community, I would think that it would go without saying, But I just like to point out, We should probably disable Firefox sync if were using it. Log out of Firefox accounts in the browser. Even if you’re not giving them telemetry they have all that data.
You can use the x bookmarks sync plugin, Don’t make an account with them just use the un-logged in plugin to backup and restore your bookmarks between browsers. On the upside it’ll even let you copy bookmarks from Firefox derivatives to Chrome derivatives.
Use their privacy friendly works.
Mozilla shares your data under certain circumstances. This helps people realize that Mozilla is able to share your data, regardless of ‘selling’ potential. Some people assumed ‘we dont sell your data’ meant ‘we dont share your data’ when that was impossible for the definition of how some built in features work.
They literally purchased an ad company
I could give you some very long stories related to this. In the end of it, it comes down to how can they ‘sterilize’ the avenues of data collection and allow more opt-out scenarios, and more nuanced potentials that would provide comfort in your browsing habits and privacy desires. It remains to be seen how the situation pans out, but this isn’t a 100% done with them action. They have opportunities here, and we’ll see if their course turns evil or not.
Just because “some people” can’t words, that doesn’t mean that you should change the words to suit the people who can’t them.
The premise of ‘sharing’ and then receiving something from who you shared with IS a form of selling. If Mozilla .never. shared data, are you sure you ‘can words’?
I mean people would rather have Firefox propped up by Google (an ad company)'s donations then?
No, that’s a bullshit false dichotomy.
People would rather have Firefox developed ethically by a proper foundation that’s supported by grants and donations even if its total operating budget is vastly lower. (It wouldn’t be able to have a grossly overpaid CEO like Mozilla does now. Oh noooooooo…)
I’m fine with that, people should advocate that more. I don’t disagree with you, but a lot of the coverage and commentary seems to reminicse about a nebulous “the way it was before” which wasn’t ideal either.
Actually? Oh my God yes. We got to have our cake and eat it too. Google, in an effort to skirt monopoly laws actually paid for the open source browser we were using.
I personally love the idea of Google’s ads paying for our untracked browsing
Well, a browser is extremely complex, and hence super expensive to make. So if Mozilla doesn’t find any other way to monetize, I guess they have to do something about user data?
Mozilla payed their last CEO seven million bucks a year. Seems like they were doing just fine without the ad tracking gravy train to afford that salary.
Holy wild speculation pulled right out of your arse, Batman!
https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Mozilla
Scroll down to Excessive Executive Pay.
Mozilla has zero financial issues. Mozilla is a non-profit that is actively investing, and receiving dividends and interest in return. A nonprofit that is generating millions in revenue for essentially nothing and paying their executives fat stacks. They have zero reason to need to do this beyond greed and disregard for their user base.
Stop citing this dude like he knows anything. Many of his videos he says he’s just yapping and doesn’t know why anyone watches. He’s not a citation of any value
Well, now, I guess all the people who like to lecture me every time the topic of Brave comes up will just chill the f*** out now.
Discovering that arsenic ingestion is bad for you doesn’t make your ingestion of cyanide better.
lololololol
Its a sad day for sure, when the example of privacy and user respect just… Isn’t anymore.
People are just largely naive. Your privacy, at least since 2001, has always been in your own hands. (Not unlike how, if you don’t want to get a virus, you’re stuck moderating your own behavior, as the community around you is largely careless.)
A comparison to malware isn’t quite accurate because in this case, the software itself is already attacking you when it ideally should be neutral.
Are you saying that Brave does not sell you out?
No, they’re saying that people have been shittong on them for years for using Brave, now that the Firefox people are in the same boat maybe they’ll stop shitting on them.
Looks at thread Nope, people are just going to shit harder.
Naw brother (or friend if I’m being too presumptuous), they’re just going to double down on being hypocritical.
Now theyll pull out all the things that Brave did most of a decade ago to stay afloat and laud it over you like it’s not something mozilla’s got on the table right now.
But their crypto… but their search… But that seven-million dollar moz CEO isn’t going to pay for himself either.
Brave is going to sell my shit. That was never in question. But knowing that up front I don’t give them anything that I want to play close to the heart.
Firefox has a fuckton on everone that they’ve had for ages that they can now sell because they changed their business model.
And sure we can turn telemetry off if we haven’t already, But how long do you think that feature is going to work as intended once it’s the only thing paying their top man to stay.
no, see, while mozilla may be monetizing its user base, we know brave is.
But we’ve always known that Brave is and if we put any information into it it was because we were okay with that.
Now you’ve got a whole lot of people that have a whole lot of information swimming around and MOZ changes their business plan…
