A community for discussion about Mozilla Firefox.
Mozilla is not selling your data, yet, but they have removed their pledge to never sell data.
It's an intentional gradual change, and they're playing a sleight of hand trick getting you to talk about whether they actually are selling data right now rather than the canary dying.
If what they have been doing for a while, is now legally "selling your data" in California they just cannot state "we will never sell your data", as the definition of what is meant by "selling data" exactly is not the same everywhere...
They should not have deleted that statement and just clarify it instead of their absolutely messy changes...
Of course you can craft a lm EULA that makes clear their never sell your data. If they want to...
I am fed up. If google does something; google baaaaaaad, if Mozilla does something: poooor Mozilla.
Maybe you want to hold both to the same standards? Yes?
Actually no, I don't want to hold both to the same standard. Google is a for profit company. I expect them to do shady shit. I expect more out of Mozilla. Doesn't mean that they screwed this up the way the media says they did. They screwed up the communication big time
Just being non-profit doesn't mean an org won't do shady stuff.
A company that is able to pay 20 millions a year to a ceo is for profit. Change my mind
The company itself is not for profit. The CEO gets payed way too much, but a for-profit company would return money to the owners (mostly shareholders/investors), which Mozilla is not
That is a very American definition of for profit.
Here in Germany, a non-profit is not allowed to do any profit. They are allowed to cover their costs, that's it. (Of course it is more complicated but that is the essence).
For years and years, Mozilla is doing shady stuff.
Let's for example look the way how they enabled DoH. Or their decision to let themselves pay by google for making google the default search engine. Or now, spinning up their own ad network.
And on the other hand, if google does something like their new ad auction stuff (that is run completely in your browser and the api is open btw) than there are only bad intentions, according to some folks.
If we keep argumenting this way, Mozilla will make itself the very thing we hate, and we are loosing a very important alternative to chrome
So, now, I am not willing to give them any more slag. They have to change
Here in Germany, a non-profit is not allowed to do any profit
That is just not true... You are not allowed to pay your profits to anyone, but investing it or building reserves is absolutely permitted and a really important thing to do especially if you're dependent on donations...
So, now, I am not willing to give them any more slag. They have to change
I agree, but that will never make me use Chrome or any Chromium based browser. Like probably a lot of people here I do not use vanilla Firefox, but rather LibreWolf and the like
Here in Germany, a non-profit is not allowed to do any profit
That is just not true... You are not allowed to pay your profits to anyone, but investing it or building reserves is absolutely permitted and a really important thing to do especially if you're dependent on donations...
As mentioned, it is of course more complicated. But I guarantee you, that german courts and the "IRS" will revoke your non profit status if you pay 20 millions to your CEO. I was chairman in a few german non profits, and the requirements are high.
Google the company only has bad intentions, despite what many working for Google might want to achieve. It’s proven time and time again that it couldn’t care less about anything other than profit, and if you don’t think profit over everything isn’t nefarious, then we just disagree.
That said, I agree with everything else you said.
Just to clarify. Google is not good. Google sees us as the product.
But: just because it is this way, misrepresentation of a real privacy feature, just because it is Google, is still bad. And treating Mozilla with silk gloves does make this worse, because it seems to lack objectivity.
And we, as a privacy loving, opensource breathing, community can not campaign for our goals successfully if we lack objectivity in communication.
Before continuing, I want to specify that I'm agreeing with you but clarifying the situation because there is a business interest involved here.
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit with several wholly-owned, for-profit business subsidiaries, most notably the Mozilla Corporation. The Corporation markets and distributes several Mozilla products, including the Firefox browser, as well as its other commercial ventures like Pocket. The corporate subsidiaries' profits do get returned to the owner of those businesses, which is the Foundation.
Yeh, I have higher standards for Mozilla, but I'm also more willing to trust them if they say they are making it right.
I trust and expect very little good from Google, other than convenience.
I'm more upset about the addition of terms of service to the browser itself, rather than upon activating optional hosted services.
A browser running on my computer does not result in its creator providing services, and does not need me to grant them a license to any data. The addition of such a license gives them the option to cause the browser to send Mozilla data I did not intend to send to Mozilla.
Firefox routinely ignores it's users wants & needs. The CEO is paid way too much. Take $5 million away from his annual salary to pay developers to create the best browser there ever was.
Her* salary.
Her, him, their. All I see is a greedy person who contributes nothing to the browser, gender makes no difference.
100% agreed
Mozilla is NOT SELLING your DATA, but they are collecting it and sharing it with select partners in order to "stay comercially viable".
They're not claiming a right to sell data right now, but they have removed the promise to not sell data.
That promise is a canary statement. When the canary dies it's an indication of something, usually that it's time to stop using the product/service.
More specifically, they aren't claiming the right to sell data however they want. However, they do have to follow all legal requests, and they can bill for this provision. If a government compells them to sell they have to oblige.
Right, that's the claim I saw from the Foundation over the weekend (yesterday?) - "selling data" is SUCH a nebulous legal concept that's different in many jurisdictions that it's borderline impossible to keep that language anymore.
...I'm not sure how completely I buy that, but I can see where they're coming from. I hope that the Mozilla Foundation will clarify what data is being harvested and sold to whom, but I've studied enough history to know that transparency fading isn't a good sign.
In an aggregated and anonymized manner
I would replace that "aggregated and anonymized" with an and/or, as that is consistent with the language in Mozilla's privacy policy. The distinction is fairly important because de-anonymizing user data is a practice of its own and exactly what it sounds like.
Now, is the data which Mozilla "shares with" (sells to) its partners anonymized reliably enough that the identity of the person it relates to can never be rediscovered? Granting Mozilla the benefit of the doubt, if it is sufficiently anonymous today, could future developments lead to de-anonymization of that data at a later date? This could include leaks, cyber-attacks directed at Mozilla, AI-assisted statistical analysis of bulk data, etc.
In an aggregated and anonymized manner
Phew, what a relief, that puts my concerns about powerful actors abusing that aggregated data fully to rest!
Just like Google
If folks are still this confused about the new changes, maybe Mozilla is still doing something wrong with their communication.
Nah. Those of us who tried explaning legalese here the last few days have been heavily downvoted.
Maybe sometimes people really just need to chill and accept that their gut feelings aren't facts.
You should not need legal people explaining the change of mission statements or FAQs... Imo Mozilla just really sucks at PR (it not just this time)
If by explaining you mean hand waving and saying it's fine because it's in legal jargon instead of plain English then sure, you did a great job of explaining 👍
https://fedia.io/m/privacy@lemmy.world/t/1853068/-/comment/9571333
Welcome to Lemmy, where not being outraged by every single thing is against the rules!
(you should also listen to the people with knowledge, which are the legal people in this instance)
I mean apparently according to California they might be?
I don't think that's the case. This article says that an overly generalised definition of "sale" was proposed in California law, but that language was removed before the law came into effect.
Instead of quibbling over the exact demarcation of selling data, they should stop whatever it is they are doing that could possibly be construed that way. Really, why are they even collecting the data? They have to collect it before they can sell it, and they shouldn't collect it in the first place.
Then there is that TOU gives an insane picture of what they think their role is when you use a browser. I don't feel like finding and pasting the words, but really their role in the process is they supply the browser and you use it. They should acknowledge that instead of pretending otherwise.
I think the fault lies in their online stuff. Things like their VPN, Pocket, FF Sync, etc... Also they collect the aggregated and anonymized ad click thing in the new tab page
I think you're both right here. Mozilla has been hunting for money (to keep the lights on), and in doing so diversified into many things. However, when it has come to light that some of these things are grey or even black towards their morals, the right thing to do is to stop doing it. Instead of keeping their actions in line with their morals, they're trying to change their morals to maintain their income.
As far as I understand it, yes possibly... But if their definition is very weird to me... I now watched 2 30 minute long videos about it and still don't understand what the problem is exactly...
What I did get though is that they majorly screwed up their PR
Basically California thinks that if you receive something of value in return for sharing data that that is considered selling data
Yes exactly. And that is entirely right and proper.
Nothing of what Mozilla should be doing meets that definition. Even if they share data with 3rd parties to process it, and even if they pay the 3rd party for that service, they're not supposed to get something in return for providing the data. But also, providing data in such a manner does not mean they are selling it.
If they are getting something in return for providing the data, be it payment, other services or even simply a discount, then they're doing something wrong.
I fucked up and used their password manager for years. Now I'm going through and deleting old accounts I forgot about and saving passwords into keepass and i'll use syncthing between phone, laptop, and pc and probably backup to a private/paid cloud provider. I need to transfer accounts away from gmail as well.
Bitwarden is the way
How do I know i can trust them?
They hold some of the hardest to aquire security certifications in the industry, both server and client are open source, and they regularly undergo and post the results of external third party audits.
Out of all password managers they are by far the most trustworthy
You can always self host or audit the code yourself.
yet
I’ve already chose alternatives, you fucked yourself firefox. Ios = Snowhaze, linux mint os = pale moon, and windows = waterfox.