this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025

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Mozilla deletes promise to never sell Firefox data. (github.com)

submitted 19 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

73 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/26136291

Mozilla has just deleted the following:

“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. "

Source: Lundke journal.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

It's pretty funny, because Firefox was like the best browser of the late 2000s, until sometime around 2011 they became adware for a decade just to make a comeback as a privacy focused browser again. So it's not like this hasn't happened before. I always wondered peoples newfound enthusiasm TBH.

Edit: I swear this happened when they switched to the rapid release cycles and FF went from version 6 to 20 in a few months and at one point it became super slow and came with unwanted ad extensions. It's almost like the internet was scrubbed of this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_version_history#Rapid_releases

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (3 children)

This seems out of context. The same git commit that removes the paragraph OP pointed out also adds the following text:

"We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too."

To me that seems more like a re-wording than a fundamental change.

Edit: I somewhat misread the commit, as @[email protected] pointed out below.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

That is not true.

The text you quoted is behind a feature-flag. When the the firefox-tou is enabled the words about not selling data are removed.

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e#commitcomment-153120154

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago

Huh, you're absolutely right, I haven't noticed that. Now, to be fair the text without the text isn't that much different but it does exclude the explicit promise not to sell data. The text shown without the flag set – and is currently shown on the Firefox website – states:

"... we believe the internet is for people, not profit. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too."

So the sentence "Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data." Is missing. So yeah, i agree, not great. But we'll see what actually happens.

To be clear, my intention isn't to defend Mozzila, for example I really don't like their privacy policy allows them to "collect technical and interaction data, such as the position, size, views and clicks on New Tab content or ads, to understand how people are interacting with our content and to personalize future content, including sponsored content." I just don't like drawing wide-sweeping conclusions based on things like wording changes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

We don't sell it it's just me and my 999+ close friends looking over it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago

Also seems like typical Lunduke trying to make something out of nothing. Dude loves to fearmonger, especially about Mozilla. I'm not saying Mozilla hasn't done things I dislike, but Lunduke has had it out for them since Brendan Eich stepped down over his opposition to gay rights.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago

Sigh...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 hours ago

Goddamnit

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

On a Lemmy I'm always the person who thinks people are overreacting or exaggerating. But this really does seem like the end of firefox as a privacy champion (which, apart from being nonprofit, was my only real reason for using it). I think I will make a donation to ladybird.

Another thing: their acceptable use policy straight up forbids viewing pornography or graphic violence. No nuance or exceptions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Where can I find this acceptable use policy?

Edit: found it but it was not mentioned in the new TOS. Does this only apply to Mozillas other services like sync and stuff?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Another thing: their acceptable use policy straight up forbids viewing pornography or graphic violence. No nuance or exceptions.

I might have violated that, but then again I didn't read the TOS.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago

Your TOS can't stop me, I can't read!

[–] [email protected] 22 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Isn't there some legal precedent for them having used the word "never"?

[–] ILikeBoobies 18 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Legally if you stay on a version prior to the license change they can’t sell your data

[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago

That makes sense, thanks.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 16 hours ago

You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villian.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e#commitcomment-153120154

Time & time again people can't comprehend that companies need revenue to survive, especially for Mozilla's sake, their > transparency has only harmed them by letting ignorant people see things like this & blindly make assumptions.

The team behind Mozilla is insanely under paid & under appreciated, please keep up the amazing work. ❤

I agree with this. Developers need to eat and pay rent too.

Reading shit like "fuck Mozilla" and "Mozilla is dead" pisses me off extremely. That is just ignorant.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 hours ago

I don't think many people criticise the developers salaries, but that of the management. The CEO's has multiplied by an order of magnitude while market share has plumeted. From my cursory search it went from ~$500k/y in 2009 to slightly over $1m/y in 2016 after which it sharply increased, today it's over $5m/y. Market share went from 30% to single digit, so it can't be performance based compensation.

And then there's the question on priotisation and scope expansion, which also determines how much money the need.

Reading shit like “fuck Mozilla” and “Mozilla is dead” pisses me off extremely. That is just ignorant.

Sure aren't constructive, but you'll always have those on the internet so i'd say the default should be to just mentally filter them out. However that doesn't mean that there aren't actual reasons to criticise Mozilla.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

While the point is valid that the devs need to eat and sleep and need to get paid, Mozilla is investing money into stupid shit like AI and starting to sell the userdata after they said that they would never do is the main issue here. I guess you would be pissed if your Wife cheats on you after she told you at the altar she wouldn't?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

thier obsession with AI(tech in general) hasnt generated useful profit for those companies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I guess if your wife needs revenue to survive, you can't argue with how she earns it. At least, that appears to be the point they're trying to make.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago

That's such a dumb take. Yes I can be fucking mad how that money is made.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 hours ago

If my wife became a prostitute without us discussing and agreeing to it together because we were having money trouble I absolutely would have a problem with it. Same the other way around. There's no way this would be an uncommon opinion.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

We need an eu browser. The governent for example should only use software that is verifiably secure.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I'd agree with that if it weren't for multiple EU goverments including mine (Germany) trying to undermine encryption and security at every opportunity possible, despite getting told off by courts more than once.

Imo the question is how a non profit can be set up to reliably follow their goals in the longterm. And my fear is that ultimately it is always down to the personnel selection, which you can't lock in.

[–] PerogiBoi 61 points 18 hours ago (23 children)

So if you don’t want to use a chromium based browser but also care about privacy, you’re now fucked?

[–] [email protected] 59 points 18 hours ago (5 children)

Firefox is open-source. Certainly, you're out of options in terms of "name-brand" browsers, but there's a number of Firefox forks. On desktop, LibreWolf is the closest thing to mainline and on Android, IronFox is the equivalent.

If you want something more than just "Firefox minus the branding and tracking", some of the deeper forks are Zen Browser and Floorp.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Do any of these also have an Android equivalent? I liked being able to browse on my phone and continue on my desktop and vice versa.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 49 minutes ago

There's no technical reason why you need to be using the same-named fork on desktop and Android; they will all communicate via Firefox Sync. e.g. I'm running LibreWolf (desktop) and IronFox (Android) with my data synced, but you could just as easily sync Zen Browser (desktop) and Fennec F-Droid (Android), etc.

That said, if you want to get both browsers from the same team/with the same branding, I think Waterfox is probably your best bet. It doesn't have quite as strong a privacy focus as LibreWolf/IronFox, which both ship with very strict privacy-focussed defaults, which many users will likely roll back. For example, the default setting in LibreWolf is to delete all history and cookies on exit. Even so, Waterfox is more privacy-focussed than upstream Firefox and has released a statement on the Mozilla license changes if you want to get a feel for their perspective.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

If you don't want to use Gecko nor Chromium, I am aware of the following alternatives:

WebKit

Though associated with Apple and Safari, WebKit (@[email protected]) has its origins in KDE and its Konqueror browser. KDE developed its own web engine called KHTML, which was forked into WebKit. It's therefore fully open source, despite the Apple connection.

On Linux you can use WebKit in GNOME Web (formerly Epiphany) or Konqueror. If you're on Mac, Safari is probably your best bet. Windows users appear to be out of luck.

Servo

Servo (@[email protected]) is a brand new Rust-based engine which was originally developed by Mozilla, but which was abandoned by them like good things often are. Thankfully the Linux foundation took over developments. It's still in development, but from their download page you can take it for a spin within seconds on all three major operating systems. It's looking pretty good.

They maintain a list of things made with Servo. The most promising project so far appears to be a browser named Verso.

Ladybird

Ladybird is another development to follow. Unlike WebKit and Servo, Ladybird is being developed as a web browser in its own right, but this browser will come with a completely original rendering engine. It aims to have an alpha released next year, and is largely written in C++.