Can someone remind me why we stopped using Firefox a while back? There was some piece of news that broke everyone’s trust, but I can’t remember what Mozilla did. Was it a change in their user agreement?

  • mhague@lemmy.world
    4·
    2 days ago

    Firefox used to have a “we’re a browser that won’t sell user data” promise. Then they changed their TOS and removed the promise, adding:

    When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."

    When people reacted to their TOS they said it was an accident, it’s just boilerplate, don’t take it seriously.

    Or in other words: an entity with a team of lawyers claimed ownership of all your data, and then downplayed it, and then has acted good since.

    Personally I stick my head way into the alligators mouth and still use Firefox.

  • Zak@lemmy.world
    25·
    4 days ago

    When? There have been a few times people stopped using Firefox in large numbers.

    One of them was when Chrome first came out. Firefox (and every other browser) at the time ran every site in one process. As sites became more reliant on Javascript, which was usually poorly written, that meant any one tab having a problem made other sites and even the browser’s own UI unresponsive, or sometimes crashed the whole browser. Chrome’s multiprocess model was a revelation. Firefox didn’t get its own implementation until 2016.

    Recently, there’s been some movement away from Firefox due to Mozilla making decisions people don’t feel align with open source, the open web, and privacy. The one that has me looking at forks is the planned addition of terms of use to the browser. Terms of use are for an ongoing relationship between a service operator and a user; Firefox is local software I’m operating myself on a computer I own. Its fine for optional online services like Sync to have terms of use, but the browser should work without those.

    • RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world
      317·
      4 days ago

      I asked ChatGPT is similar question earlier this week. This was the answer.

      While Mozilla has not been found to sell user tracking data in the conventional sense, the introduction of features like PPA (Privacy-Preserving Attribution) and changes in privacy policy language have understandably caused concern among users. These developments suggest a shift towards balancing user privacy with the need to support advertising models. Users prioritizing privacy should stay informed about these changes and adjust their browser settings accordingly.

  • Lasherz@lemmy.world
    11·
    4 days ago

    I believe you’re thinking of a ToS change where the wording was incredibly vague, leading to some outlets to claim they were selling browsing data to 3rd parties and AI modelers. They changed it right after to specify that the data they were using wasn’t browsing data, and the data they did gather wouldn’t be used for AI. They are not as invasive as google, but you’re subject to Google on Firefox because of the ubiquity of their telemetry and search optimizations across websites. Firefox with an add-on such as noscript is much better than Chrome still, in my opinion. At the very least, it’s nice to have a browser that doesn’t work to undermine its own add-on functionalities.

  • softcat@lemmy.caEnglish
    10·
    4 days ago

    The recent main one seemed to be no longer promising to not sell user data, but it’s been a culmination of little things.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-firefox-i-loved-is-gone-how-to-protect-your-privacy-on-it-now/

    Personally I’ve been kind of miffed since they decided to use the experiments feature to be paid to shill for the Mr. Robot tv show, including in their enterprise release, making people think they got hacked. But that was years ago and forgotten.

  • Guidy@lemmy.world
    71·
    4 days ago

    Firefox is better than most but still smugly makes anti-user changes which are complete dog shit.

    Remember when they turned off your ability to choose to load extensions that weren’t signed, because fuck you?

    Fuck Pepperidge farm, I remember that shit.

    Or how about DNS over https, because fuck you, user, why should you have any say over name resolution when you might use that power to block ads and malware?

  • solrize@lemmy.world
    72·
    4 days ago

    I don’t even remember many times Firefox/Mozilla has changed its extension API and broken everyone’s add-ons. It gets tiresome.