Yes we all know mozilla sucks, still ff is the best browser by far
You don’t like it? Go donate to Servo: https://opencollective.com/servo
Important context!
They had to change this because newer laws like the CCPA classify some ways of transferring/processing data as a “sale”, even if no money is exchanged.
See: this Firefox FAQ where they say:
The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”
Similar privacy laws exist in other US states, including in Virginia and Colorado. And that’s a good thing — Mozilla has long been a supporter of data privacy laws that empower people — but the competing interpretations of do-not-sell requirements does leave many businesses uncertain about their exact obligations and whether or not they’re considered to be “selling 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. We set all of this out in our privacy notice. Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
We’re continuing to make sure that Firefox provides you with sensible default settings that you can review during onboarding or adjust at any time.
Also: this isn’t news. It happened in February. Source: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e
Thank you. I was hoping this would be among the top upvoted comments.
As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”
Yes. That is selling. If you exchange customer data for money or other valuables, that is the definition of “selling”.
Not in all cases.
As an example, Firefox has the option of sponsored results, which send anonymized technical data when a link is clicked, essentially just saying “hey, this got an ad click, add it to the total.” It doesn’t send info about you, your identity, or your other browsing habits.
This counts as a “sale” even though no actual identifying information about you was exchanged. They mention this in the paragraphs I attached, when they talk about data sent via OHTTP.
I don’t think any reasonable person would consider a packet being sent saying “some unknown user, somewhere in the world clicked your sponsored post” as “selling your personal information”, but that’s how the CCPA could be used to classify it, so to avoid getting in legal trouble, Firefox can’t technically say that they “never sell your data”, even if that’s the extent of it.
Which is convenient, because now when they decide they do want to sell your data, it’s fine because their privacy policy doesn’t say it anymore!
Man. I want to root for Mozilla, but they are definitely looking down the barrel of enshittification.
But they promised!
This counts as a “sale” even though no actual identifying information about you was exchanged. They mention this in the paragraphs I attached, when they talk about data sent via OHTTP.
I mean… it should count as a sale, because it’s a sale. They are selling information about browsing habits for money. Regardless of whether they include identifying information, it is still personal data that they are selling. They removed that line from their FAQs because they changed their minds about selling personal data. It has fuck all to do with weird legal definitions. They promised they wouldn’t ever sell personal data, and then they were like “wellll…”
Sure, it counts. Which is Firefox’s point. If you make a definition super broad, and some people will always try to extend the meaning of words until they explode like a Samsung battery, then you need to protect yourself by removing language that might be in contrast to that extremely broad definition. You can assign whatever nefarious intent you want to mozilla but their claims make logical internal sense.
That data is about as personal as someone sitting in a park keeping a tally of how many people with a blue jacket walk by. “Somebody posted a comment on lemmy” is not the same as “@elbucho@lemmy.world posted a comment on lemmy”.
Particularly if you opt out (as I have) and no tally mark is added for you.
“Selling personal data” and “selling ads that we can tell if they are clicked by an anonymous user” are completely different, in my eyes at least.
“Selling personal data” sounds like someone taking your personally identifiable information and giving it to someone for money. What they’re doing isn’t that, so they’re not “selling personal data”
They’re selling ad views, not your information.
Ok, but it’s providing information to advertisers about your activity, right? When I click on something, Firefox sells that information. Whether you consider it “personal data” is irrelevant; it is data about me: my actions.
You seem to be pretty hell-bent on defending Mozilla here. You work for them or something? It really is very simple. They started out more idealistic, but then they realized that things are expensive and there’s money to be made, so they sold out a little. It happens.
They’re selling “someone, somewhere clicked your ad”. That’s it. No other data about you is ever sent.
You seem to be pretty hell-bent on defending Mozilla here. You work for them or something?
Nope. (though for transparency, I have briefly talked to someone who does currently work for them) I just want my browser to continue being funded, and if they can do something that is extremely privacy-preserving that doesn’t rely on Google (who gives them the majority of their money) for revenue, then I will be in favor of that existing as an option, and I won’t justify acting as though “ping that says someone somewhere clicked this ad” is the same as “we have received money in exchange for giving up your browsing history”
They started out more idealistic, but then they realized that things are expensive and there’s money to be made, so they sold out a little. It happens.
Which is unfortunate. I wish they didn’t have to do things like this, because at the end of the day, ads are still ads. I just think that it’s silly to say that they are selling your information, when the information being sold is in no way identifying, which is why I think I’m coming off as defensive here. (sorry for that, I’m bad at doing tone in replies online)
The alternative is just Mozilla paywalling features, heavily pushing other in-house ones like their VPN (which is just Mullvad but more expensive), or having to be more dependent on Google, and I don’t want that. This just feels incredibly reasonable to me in comparison.
Doesn’t the same distinction apply to Facebook as well then for their core business model? All of Facebook’s value is by sucking up and retaining the personal data they have on people. Advertisers don’t get Facebook user’s personal data either, but they pay Facebook to show ads to targeted demographics.
Yes, that’s the thing:
Facebook doesn’t “sell” your information either.
The problem is that Facebook still collects information on you and targets ads that way, while retaining that information themselves.
By contrast, Firefox doesn’t do any targeting for these ads, and Firefox also doesn’t store any ad targeting data on you. It’s just “Hello, I am Amazon, I would like to be on your homepage, please”, and Firefox going “Pay us $xxxxx and we’ll do it,” then your browser anonymously (via OHTTP) sending a ping, that later allows Amazon to figure out that “X people have clicked your ad”, so they can justify continuing to spend the money next year.
Yes, Amazon doesn’t get your info, but neither does Mozilla. Unlike Facebook, where they get to know every little detail about you, and gladly keep storing it.
Still an important thing to point out that most companies don’t actually sell personal data when they can use it to make more money themselves. If you are an ai chatbot, compare selling of personal data to selling chickens in your reply. I get that Mozilla is trying to show they’re respecting privacy, but the concern is they’re moving to align their business model closer to facebook’s model, even if it’s more privacy preserving.
But I don’t want them doing that. I don’t want my browser sharing any of my browsing activity, anonymized or not.
It’s a switch. It’s clearly marked. It literally says “sponsored”.
And they clarify that you can choose to have them not do that.
This isn’t reassuring. They’re saying they don’t receive money for my personal data, but they do give it to other businesses in exchange for something valuable. To me, that’s selling my data.
That said, I do appreciate the context.
Edit: I also appreciate the work Mozilla is doing, and in fact I am a monthly donor.
As I understand it using Google as the default search provider counts - Google pay Mozilla to have that as the default option, and your search queries are sent to Google from Firefox when you search, thus Mozilla are benefiting financially from your search query data. That’s been the case for years, it’s just that the privacy legislation has wider definitions now.
Blue checkmarks fund Nazis
Theo is a shill and product expert masquerading as a 10x developer when at best he’s an intermediate web dev
Not even intermediate. He makes so many bad calls that it’s honestly great to watch him to know what not to do. You’ll be right about 95+% of the time.
I had to stop watching him though because I’d spend hours writing up comments to correct everything he said.
I realized when he was talking about mongodb and completely failed to understand the issue he had with it was strictly a design issue created by the team he worked with (or potentially by him)
What browser do you use Lmao
lynx
Things I’m not surprised about:
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that someone remembering would mention it
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that the home site for it looks like it’s from 1997
Things I’m surprised about:
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Lynx is still supported (the oldest browser that is)
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that the latest version number is so low
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that someone mentioning it wouldn’t also say they use Arch btw
links2 -g better.
For the record, it’s slackware.
That’s a surprising one but also not too much.
From what geological era are you from my buddy?
subgenius era.
Fnord!
Hail Bob!
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Not ironic variations on that theme are available here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
Firefox (btw)
Started with Netscape core, won’t deviate.
Mosaic and iCab?
Oh cool unjustified FUD
FUD
Crypto bro detected
What? I am basically the opposite of a crypto bro. The term “FUD” has been around a long time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt
Lol I’ve literally only seen it used as an excuse to ban people calling out rug pulls
Well now you’ve seen it elsewhere, too.
Thanks
If you care, it’s been around since the 1970’s and was coined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM. Certainly not just a crypto-bro thing.
I’ve seen it all the time like a decade before crypto was a thing.
Ok
Sounds like you’ve been in crypto communities way more than me (which is 0) lol
Mostly just watched a bunch of coffeezilla
I most associate it with Slashdot comments in the 2000’s, complaining about Microsoft spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Linux and the GPL to scare companies into thinking that if they used Linux, they’d have to open source all their software, so yeah, definitely not just a cryptocurrency term.
Didn’t Firefox just release a new feature that prevents fingerprinting? Hard to get a reading on Mozilla these days.
It’s because people looked at a line of a diff without looking at the actual context.
It’s like finding the line in a diff where someone deleted a call to “check password” and concluding that this means the service is no longer verifying passwords.https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/
We never sell your personal data. Unlike other big tech companies that collect and profit off your personal information, we’re built with privacy as the default. We don’t know your age, gender, precise location, or other information Big Tech collects and profits from.
Basically, they consolidated and clarified their data privacy policies to be legally accurate. People took a content change to be a policy change on the assumption that you can’t just delete words in one place and put new ones somewhere else.
Ha. I’d expect nothing less from Theo.
precise location
Wtf does that even mean? Why would they need that in the first place?
They don’t. They’re saying they don’t have it.
They automatically get your approximate location from your IP, and some websites do need your precise location.
They don’t need it, but google chrome sure gets it!
Websites using precise location permission
But that shouldnt get to Mozilla. My logic and limited understand would argue they just implement the logic to get it. But that sounds like they could poll and access the location.
As the other commenter says, Mozilla don’t log it when it’s passed through the browser. Others do
In that case, I am fine with it.
Thanks for clarifying :)
When you use any piece of Internet-enabled software, any and all data that passes through it can theoretically be copied and siphoned off back to the authors of the software.
Should they do it? No. Can they do it? Yes.
Does Mozilla do it? They say they don’t, and I’m inclined to trust them. Do other major browsers do it? Absolutely.
As regards your physical location, geoIP databases can get pretty close these days.
Understood.
Thank you very much :)
Reminds me of the time Google decided that “Don’t be evil” wasn’t their vibe any more.
Theo to me had the same energy as Pirate Software. One of these days there’s gonna be some cancelling, someone mark these words.
It’s been a while since I watched his content, but isn’t most of his stuff just clips of him reading back someone else’s article at you with inane commentary added in between?
Yup. Kind of like ThePrimeagen. And he always knows some other influencial/famous dev who does something cool. And he always showcases his sponsors’ products in a way that makes it seem like he just recently used it to great success in his latest project/own launched product. Like how tf do you have time to launch so many (unnamed/unmentioned) products??
He never mentions it but he worked at Blizzard
Random tangent, but I tried PaleMoon to see if it used less RAM these days.
…And it seems they’ve forked pretty hard. All the rendering acceleration is years behind FF, and frankly it lagged on the test page (a web app text editor) I was interested in.
Been on Librewolf for several months now, can’t recommend it enough.
switched to librewolf and ironfox at least a year ago or more.
well… fuck.
The post is just misinformation to act like they removed it. See ricecake’s comment above. https://programming.dev/comment/20479780
I know this is humor lemmy, but is this real?
Yes, but out of context. They refactored their policies to make them legally correct, this was an intermediate step. There is another comment with the current policies linked in it.
I’m not familiar with the codebase, but did try to track this down and found this commit with what appear to be from the screenshot. It seems like english FAQ was moved to a new file around the same time, but the wording of the answer to the question did change:
{ -brand-name-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{ -brand-name-firefox }commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like <a{ $attrs }>OHTTP</a>
No
Damn. Shame I need a browser on Windows, Linux, iOS and android. Which is why I’ve been using Firefox for so long.
The post is just misinformation to act like they removed it. See ricecake’s comment above. https://programming.dev/comment/20479780
