this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025

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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 s38b35M5@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.world

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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.

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[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 2 points 1 day ago

Use their privacy friendly forks.

[–] verdigris@lemmy.ml -5 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Exactly what I expected: a restatement of the terms, pointing out that they're not onerous at all, and a link to jwz's blog, the single person on earth with the biggest hate boner for Mozilla.

They need money and they don't get much from donations. I'd love to hear everyone's ideas for how they can generate enough revenue to keep the lights on without either making deals with Google or engaging in any form of advertising or data trading.

There's absolutely a line where I would start looking elsewhere, but this ain't it.

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[–] duhhhh9@discuss.tchncs.de -2 points 1 day ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] duhhhh9@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago

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'?

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[+] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world -45 points 1 day ago (20 children)

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.

[–] Gerudo@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

I've just learned not to say the B word on Lemmy.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip -4 points 1 day ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world -5 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Orion is much better. Vote with your computing power.

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