No Stupid Questions

how are they supposed to "sell your data"

First step is collecting it. Putting provisions to grab everything from the software you installed on your device and use to do everything is a good start. Second step is selling it. Data broker loves data, surprisingly. And even small, inconsequential stuff can go a long way when you can correlate with dozens, or hundreds, of data points.

if you just never use a Mozilla account

Given how it's implemented, the data pushed inside your account may be in a safer place than what you use the browser to do daily at this point.

and uncheck all the telemetry

Funny thing. Even with everything unchecked/disabled/toggled off/whatever, there's a handful of ping back and other small reports that are configured to go out. You can turn these off using the complete config page; the one that warns people that its dangerous and have no clear way to know what most of its options do.

Its not like they can secretly steal your data, since its Open Source

If by "secretly" you mean without us knowing, it would be hard indeed, as long as people did look into the source AND the built images were faithful to the source, too. They are not doing it secretly, at least for now, anyway. That's the point of their "privacy notice" that includes basically everything, which they then use as a safeguard saying "we can't do shit (unless specified in the privacy notice).

It seems to me like just more FUD that Google is spreading to undermine our trust in free software

The policy changes comes from Mozilla. Were written, published, and updated by Mozilla, on their blog (and legal pages). What the fuck are you talking about with Google?

Heck, if you knew 2cts about this, Google actually low-key needs Firefox to exists as a counterpoint to Chrome's hegemony, unless they want another trial for being too good at their job.

Something else that needs to be understood about Mozilla: Money!

The Foundation was formed in 2003. Mitchell Baker, the first CEO, stepped aside in 2008 but stayed on as Chairperson of the foundation.

• In 2018, she got nearly $2.5million in compensation as foundation chair.
• In 2019 that rose to $3million
• In 2020, she returned as CEO and received over $3million in salary.
• In 2021 her salary was over $5.5million.
• In 2022 it reached nearly $7million.
• In 2023 it was $6million again.

Think about that for a second. Mozilla's market share has been struggling, and their financials have been weak; but their lead person pulled in over $26 million dollars over a handful of years.

This entire activity has been a long game to extract 'maximum shareholder value' into Baker's pockets.

We're all keyboard warriors with opinions.

I'll get downvoted to hell for this, but I honestly feel like right now it is a nothingburger.

Will I continue to keep an eye on the things they do? Yes. Does their CEOs work history bother me? Yes. Will I keep using it and just keep tabs on settings and extensions? Yes.

I would like to point out that they are free to modify the source code before building the binary they distribute. Being open source does not mean protection from secretly stealing data.

With chrome it is obvious because the closed part is called chrome and the open is chromium. But it is certainly possible to not make "stealing" magic on top public.

I'm a software developer, and understand the technicalities and options available to me. I am capable of forking Firefox and make myself a custom build with anything I don't like stripped out. (Capable of, not wanting to.)

They removed "We don't sell your data and we never will" from their FAQ and they added "We may sell your data" to the ToS.

I am unhappy about this change. It is a clear sign that the people in charge of Firefox want to sell user data, and that the irrecoverable enshittification path has been chosen. It means that at some point in the next few years, I can't trust Firefox' with my privacy. And they sure as fuck don't have anything else going for them: The browser eats memory and freezes my camera during video conferencing, and is plain not supported in some of the software I use at work.

The rationale is probably something entirely reasonable, like "While we do not intend to sell user data, the phrasing was too vague and not helpful. What is selling, and what is user data, really?" An organization with strong privacy values would be so far from anything "bad" that the phrasing as it was would not be a problem for them.

It's irrelevant that right now privacy settings and xyz and telmentry is clear and opt in etc. Because the point is that they are gearing up to change that. The settings will be less clear, user data will be separated into shit like "operability assistance", "personal information", "experience improvement metrics" with some of it enabled by default because, etc.

Mozilla is changing the license used for the Firefox executable/binary. The TOS will be the governing license over Firefox, the branded browser executable. It will no longer be open source, as defined by the Open Source Initiative, as users are no longer free to use the software however they want. Firefox will now be source available.

The source code for the browser, is (at least as of this comment) FOSS under the MPL2 license. People are free to recompile the browser under a different name (e.g. Librewolf, Waterfox, etc.).

This is not FUD. I read through the new TOS, Acceptable Use Policy, and Privacy Policy. Since the browser executable was governed under the MPL2, there was little concern from the open source community. I made my judgement from those documents alone.

The problem is that a reduction in trust correlates to a reduction in users. A reduction in Firefox increases Chromium’s dominance on the web, which is a near monopoly already. A monopoly on web renderers in turn is bad for open web standards.

It's been a few steps in a concerning direction by them recently. As of right now, it's still OK to use IMO but I'm sincerely hoping this is the extent of it, or even that they row back some of the recent changes.

However, I still want it to exist because its the only viable alternative at the moment to Google's dominance. Yes there are plenty of forks (two of which I use) but they still rely on Firefox as the core product. I don't think any are hard forks (or am I wrong?). I'm very uncomfortable at the thought of using a browser thats based on Chromium and/or unable to run the full version of UBO or have Containerised tabs.