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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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[–] Avenging5@sh.itjust.works 17 points 21 hours ago (6 children)

Now that Mozilla's fucked. What's the next option that's not Chromium?

[–] wittycomputer@feddit.org 1 points 5 hours ago

Librewolf, degoogled chromium, private windows. If you don't want your data to be sold, don't give out your data.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 35 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Mozilla is sliding down a slippery slope to enshitification; but they're still near the top of that slide. The bad stuff hasn't actually come yet. So Firefox is still top-tier in the short term.
In the medium term, we can look towards a fork such as Librewolf or Waterfox.
And in the long term, we'll probably turn to a new project using Ladybird or Servo.

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 6 points 12 hours ago

It do be a slippery slope though

[–] free@lemmy.ml 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Disable tor in tor browser.

[–] dai@lemmy.world 14 points 18 hours ago

Ladybird in a few years, forks of Firefox for now.

[–] SirHery@lemmy.world 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

A different fork from firefox like librewolf

[–] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Librewolf is just some patches added on top of Firefox.

[–] TheChickenOfDoom@lemm.ee 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 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.

[–] yulian@sopuli.xyz 0 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 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.

[–] uis@lemm.ee 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

IceCat

[–] bluewing@lemm.ee 3 points 14 hours ago

That isn't ready for common use by most people until there they offer binaries for easy installation.