Mozilla drops new Privacy Note and Terms of Service; People are saying it is Bad News
Mozilla drops new Privacy Note and Terms of Service; People are saying it is Bad News
We’re introducing a Terms of Use for Firefox for the first time, along with an updated Privacy Notice. Why now? Although we’ve historically relie
Not a good look for Firefox. Third partners and device fingerprinting clearly mentioned in the documents.
The move is the latest development in a series of shifts Mozilla has undergone over the past year.
The gecko engine and Firefox forks, such as Tor, Mullvad, Librewolf, and Arkenfox, are stables of private, open source web browsing.
In fact, Mozilla's is one of the few browser engines out there, in a protocol-heavy industry that many say only corporate or well-funded non-profits can reliably develop.
What is more, daily driving the more hardened-for-privacy Firefox derivatives can be frowned upon by many sites, including your bank and workplace.
Mozilla's enshittification leaves the open source community without a good alternative to Firefox, after years of promoting it as a privacy-friendly alternative to spyware-cum-browser Chrome.
Lmao, this is fascism behavior
Doesn't using tor or librewolf fingerprint you from the standpoint of using a rare browser?
Not an exhaustive list on the Gecko engine or its forks:
- Mozilla Firefox (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS)
- LibreWolf (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Waterfox (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Tor Browser (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android)
- Pale Moon (Windows, Linux)
- Basilisk (Windows, Linux)
- K-Meleon (Windows)
- Midori (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- SeaMonkey (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Floorp (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- CometBird (Windows)
- IceDragon (Windows)
- Flock (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Capyloon (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Ladybird (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android)
- QupZilla (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Zen Browser (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Comodo IceDragon (Windows)
- Otter Browser (Windows, macOS, Linux)
Does using a fork like Librewolf and Ironfox keep you safe from this?
I don't think we understand very well the threat model here. Are we talking about having a Mozilla account or the web engine itself. If you have an account they will probably start doing mining shit with it. What about activists researching certain topics then? The content browsed can be visible to Mozilla if they use their account for syncing bookmarks. That should be a dealbreaker right there. No different than Meta user-profiling the fuck out of your engagement behaviors. Now if this is NOT the case and you haven't a Mozilla account, I assume that the version of the web engine available back at the time of the fork is exactly the same. So far so good.
The problem is that browsers are hard, and there is a ton of web protocols to be implemented, various fixes for security, support extensions and other QOL features. WORD ON THE STREET is that tasks like these cannot be undertaken as solo/hobby projects, that funding and an organization structure is essential. The teams behind LibreWolf, Waterfox, etc have a track record of already lagging behind Firefox's version updates. Same goes with user-profile and configuration sets like Arkenfox (if I am not wrong). You may tweak the conf all you want, but if privacy and anonymity is compromised at the web engine level, these forks will be left with little to do about it. Then the only option will be to keep using an old version of the web engine (sacrificing security and quality of life extensions), or ditching the gecko web engine altogether.
That is why people are looking for genuine alternatives to the web engine.
I keep Firefox, brave, Librewolf, and Vivaldi All configured and loaded with my plugins and bookmarks.
When Google pulled out of Firefox funding I expected them to go down a dark path.
I don't know that any of those choices of browsers are going to be significantly better than the others long-term. I'm also hoping for ladybug eventually.
LW doesn't seem to play nice with some of my sites and some of my plugins. It's the one I want most to work. The last time I tried it, delivering pass keys out of bitwarden in it didn't work. And that kind of makes it a no-go for me. I should try it again though it's been at least a year.
I'm pretty sure brave would sell my kidneys if they could. But they are the only one on the list that's truly funded and they keep up with the Joneses on YouTube ad blocking. And there also probably the strongest browser for anti-fingerprinting at the moment.
Vivaldi seems to work okay but it's just a Google clone, they've only dedicated to not enforcing manifest V3 for "as long as they could."
I thought Mullvad was the best in anti-fingerprinting. Anyone can check their own configuration with EFF's "cover your tracks" site.
They slightly edge out brave on vanilla. Once you load all of your plugins and stuff braves a little better at lying about it. To be fair they're both close enough it doesn't matter either one will get the job done. I usually think of mull as a leave it vanilla and use it when you need to leave no trace.
Well it's been a nice time while it lasted but this should be a lesson that nothing is safe from enshitification and corruption. Fortunately there are a few options till something better arrives. Personally I'm waiting for Ladybug
Ladybug xD
People are saying it is Bad News
So, uhh, you want to tell us who is saying it's bad news?
gestures vaguely in a direction
Ehh, people, you know?
I have the feeling people are overreacting to anything Mozilla does these days, just to have an excuse to talk people into using (politically?) worse browsers.
Strangely enough, that's what I thought for a long time but not this time. Removing the lines I saw makes absolutely no sense unless you're selling users data, which I strongly oppose to.
I've started to use librewolf, unsure if this is a good idea.
Yeah, ususally at this point someone goes "ugh, I'm never using Firefox again because Mozilla don't respect people any more... iT's TiMe To iNsTaLl BRaVe!"
Your mastodon feed might be different that mine, lmao
Which Firefox fork do people recommend? Ideally it should be available as Flatpak, keep the Firefox version number and not have a separate user-agent.
LibreWolf seems to be the best on first glance? https://flathub.org/apps/io.gitlab.librewolf-community
Zen seems to have picked up a lot of privacy improvements but it's a pretty small team doing a lot of ambitious work. I like it, but it's got a lot of (minor, mostly aesthetic) bugs.
I use mullvad for stuff I really don't want a record of (for as much as that's possible)
On the chrome side, Vivaldi (former opera before they sold out to china) is a good browser, but even more ambitious and even more buggy than zen. It has a built in email client. Like, who does that?
Unfortunately Vivaldi is proprietary, so it's not an option for me.
I switched to LibreWolf after seeing these news. It's been working just as well as firefox and you can adjust the privacy functions as much or as little as you want.
Librewolf is the best ✅
I wish librefox would come to android
I'm using Fennec on mobile and it seems to be working fine.
On the contrary, I think this is a responsible way to operate. The terms of use apply to the Mozilla distributed binary, not the open source version and open source forks, and I don't think additional terms shut them out of that. The privacy policy is clear, concise as can be and links so that people can jump directly to what is being collected.
If Mozilla wants to limit their use of my input, why the do I need to give them a full, non-exclusive license?
Have you considered what is driving this change?
Looking from the sidelines, I think it's all about money, specifically, how to make the development of Firefox sustainable. Yes, I'm aware of the cynical view that this is about lining the pockets of the CEO, I have no evidence for this.
I think that's essentially caused by how we have licensed open source software and had limited resources to combat abuse at the industrial scale that silicon valley companies have monetized other people's work.
Bruce Perens is attempting to erect "Post Open", but I'm not yet sure if that is going to solve the fundamental issues.
Disclaimer: I've worked a little on the community standards document for the post open project.
Being halfway between both sides, I can see the need for a monetary model to sustain development, yet I am challenged by the opacity that this feels like. The OP's point that it feels like a downward slide toward principles compromise is challenging. Especially in light of the enshittification of everything lately, Mozilla needs to do a better job communicating how this is not going down that path and yet also trying to sustain itself.
Being halfway between both sides
People really need to stop playing devil advocate, «Especially in light of the enshittification of everything lately». Mozilla has gone downhill for a good while now, being gentled by sweet Google money and spending it in trends far too late only to waste it, employees keep getting fired while the CEO gets a regular raise and Firefox barely got improved over the years. And now they want to jump head first into AI, way too late again, all the while we already know all AI compagnies run at a tremendous loss. Can you even call that « trying to sustain itself» at this point ? Seems surreal to me.
All I really see is another breach of trust in a full history of mistakes, probably the last one.
I'm looking into Ladybird browser that everyone here is talking about and I can't find anything about when they will release something.
Alpha will drop around 2026[site], but they have several contributors so who knows. Compiled it a few months ago at it was just a browser without engine, not sure how much it developed now but I'm hopeful
Keep an eye on it, but it's not ready yet.
Time for Ladybird to release their first alpha?
Looks like Mozilla has decided they can no longer ignore the money they can gain from having more and more data to sell.
Joining Google on the ad/data sales Evil Side.
🤷♂️ 🤷♂️ 🖕
Will be very sad if they continue down this slippery slope. I guess my last donation will stay just that 🫠
