this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
758 points (98.1% liked)

Privacy

5031 readers
1251 users here now

A community for Lemmy users interested in privacy

Rules:

  1. Be civil
  2. No spam posting
  3. Keep posts on-topic
  4. No trolling

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
758
Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke (www.theregister.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
170 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Librewolf is just some patches added on top of Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Which happen to remove all telemetry, ads, reporting, etc. You know, the reason we don't want to use vanilla Firefox.

Use Librewolf. Please don't use any damned Chromium-based trash.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I'll stop using Chromium-based trash once Firefox devs stop acting all holier than thou and implement WebUSB and WebSerial instead of some vague notion they are protecting me from myself by not implementing it.