It's fascinating how any Firefox thread here inevitably devolves into accusations that Mozilla has abandoned users and a push to switch to alternatives, despite Mozilla working in the interest of users to a infinitely greater degree than any other major browser vendor.
Indeed. Talking about privacy and having spyware and ads activated by default and now this probably to legally safeguard this and more speak a very clear language.
The only reason to still use FF is indeed, that the competition is worse in this regard.
But that will change, once Ladybird becomes mature enough.
Pinging a Mozilla server to see if there is an active and usable internet connection is not spyware, let's stop with these useless accusations.
It's a product which optionally does accept some help from the users, e.g. opt-in error reports, which is a huge help.
Certain people consider that a blatant violation of their rights for some reason, and they would apparently rather see the last bastion of a non-chrome internet die.
" Firefox also shares information with our marketing partners to measure and improve these campaigns; what information is specifically shared varies (depending on how you discovered Firefox and your operating system) but generally includes how you were referred to our download page and whether you actively use Firefox. Where Firefox is pre-installed on your device, technical and interaction data (your device type and whether Firefox is used) will be sent to our marketing partners, and shared with Mozilla."
Lots of words and details to hide the kind of important detail, that they do sell the data by default how you browse the internet. What websites you use, how long etc.
It's no business of the browser to know if there is an active and usable internet connection. All it needs to know are the responses to the URLs I have asked it to request.
It’s about expectations. In very simple language: people expect Microsoft and Google to track the hell out of them. But Mozilla says they are your friend and respects privacy, but then their actions speak the opposite.
A betrayal from a friend is harder to handle than a blow from an enemy.
Mozilla's goals are still much more aligned with my own than any other browser vendor. Not even close. It's not a betrayal, it's a difference of opinion between friends.
Edit: If that. I personally think this Terms of Use thing is a storm in a teacup.
Are they? Their incentive is to maintain their revenue stream, almost all of which currently comes from Google. That source is now under threat so, to continue being able to pay the bills, they need to find another. And it's a big hole to fill.
Yes, Firefox is the best bad option. But I'm not sure how we dont classify it as a betrayal to remove these statements:
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.
and
...Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data...
While also weaseling your words about your new policy and how its "basically the same thing if you think about it" [1]
[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/ - "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 Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
> Edit: If that. I personally think this Terms of Use thing is a storm in a teacup.
You may be right, yeah. I don't actually use Firefox, there was something else they did like this before which spooked me off. I was mainly explaining the seemingly odd response people have about this, and why they created a storm.
It's like a friend who says they are your friend, but then don't act like it. As opposed to say a known asshole being an asshole, people don't make a big deal about that any longer.
The same effect applies to political parties. The people that care about X focus their complaints to the party that is trying to address issues with X.
Yeah, pretty much. If you look historically, it's always that traitors and betrayers get the most severe punishment. It just wakes up something very basic in humans.
Relative to Mozilla: on the advertising front I can't judge whether Apple is worse or about the same. On most other fronts I don't think there's much of a question. Others disagree, the extent to which Apple's actions are user-hostile is an often debated topic I'm not particularly interested in re-threading.
Google and Microsoft aren't really a comparison, both have been openly anti-user on many fronts for many years.
No, I stand by my statement. I consider Apple extremely user-hostile and in many ways worse than Microsoft and Google. Those ways are just less broadly agreed upon.
You're right, and at the same time those two things go together if you think about it. The browser that does more (or cares at all) is held to the higher standard and inevitably found wanting.
(I'm not taking sides in the debate about it, I just find internet psychology fascinating)
It's disheartening to see people playing villification of users when it is the companies (yeah, mozilla CORPORATION) that went back on their words. Just cos you did something good in the past isn't and shouldn't be an excuse to do bad things now.
Also, why are we talking as if we haven't seen these same things happening to favourite products/companies over and over again? You don't need to be an analyst to put things together.
Tell me why I should care when they gave up Rust and MDN to competitors with the excuse of no money and then gave the boss a heft hike with an ever decreasing userbase? Would any company give a hike of this margin to it's employee when their product is doing bad in the market?
They kept doing things against the community. And then they bought an ad company, then this change. ENSHITTIFICATION IS WRITTEN ON THE WALL IN BOLD LETTERS. Let them backtrack.
Still very very disappointed. We are supposed to be a community who should be thinking through things. This isn't a new scenario. We have seen this so many times.
