Firefox is trying to gain back user trust with this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=O-xyNkvIB9g

This is a legit question: Should anybody trust Firefox again unless they put "we won't sell your data" back into the privacy policy? I'm actually not sure if they haven't already done so, let me elaborate:

https://brave.com/privacy/browser/ Brave: "We do not sell, trade, or transfer your information to any third parties." This seems to obviously be in the legally binding text part. As is this one: "It’s Brave’s policy to not collect personal data1 unless it’s necessary to provide services to our users, or to meet certain legal obligations. We do not buy or sell personal data about consumers." (Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.)

However, for Firefox it seems ambiguous to me, which worries me: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#notice There is no appearance of "sell" in the entire privacy document, excpet for the top summary where i'm not sure if it's at all legally non-binding.

Does anybody know if it is legally binding? If Mozilla were serious about it, why would they leave it ambiguous whether it is...?

Based on that, I'm not sure if Mozilla's video about getting users back is worth trusting. I wonder if it's just me.

Update for clarification: I'm not using Brave myself, and this isn't a suggestion anybody should blindly do so.

Problem with FOSS movement happened is not all parts are self sustainable. Which leads to market fit revenue system which is basically selling data as of now. Hope this changes in future.

They legally cannot state that they will not sell data, because - according to some states' laws - things like "XX% of users utilise Google as their primary search engine" is already "selling user data".

Because they use user data to calculate that percentage, and it's being used in relationship with Google who is paying Mozilla.

I switched to waterfox, I will never trust Mozilla again for a wide variety of reasons.

The reasoning for Firefox changing their policy is that legally, in some jurisdictions, a sale of data is very ambiguous.

They are sending a "count of active users" to advertisers, which their legal team thinks counts as a sale of private data.

Is this good enough a reason? Up to you really. Their policy is fairly wide open for further actual data sales now, it certainly gives me an itchy feeling.

For them to sell your data, they need to collect it first. And as of now, all data collection can still be opted out of.

Trust is hard to gain, very easy to lose. And much harder to regain, once its lost.

I have been a Firefox user since... its Mosaic days. And even after Chrome became a thing, FF remained my default choice. It was just my browser, I would shrug at anyone telling me Chrome was so much better.

Alas, their recent switch in regards to data/ads and after that their focus on AI, after a few previous decisions of them that quite worried me too, convinced me to do what I had never imagined I would do: replace FF as my default browser.

I now use Waterfox, and if Firefox is still installed on my Linux box I have not used it since (I'm a liar: I clicked it once, out of habit). I just don't feel comfortable using it, it's not my browser anymore. It's just a browser, like Chrome or Edge, some corp is trying to force feed me, and to screw me with. Thx, but no.

I would love to see FF change path and regain my trust. But this will take some efforts.

Same boat. Used Mozilla since back when you had to futz to get it to compile.

Fuck Mozilla. Fuck FireFox.

LibreWolf fixed what the Foundation and Board enahittified.

https://brave.com/privacy/browser/ Brave: “We do not sell, trade, or transfer your information to any third parties.” This is obviously in the legally binding text part.

This is only for data that the user transmits to them in conjunction with feedback.

I still remember the Mozilla Internet Application Suite before the browser part was spun off into Firefox and the email into Thunderbird. Some of their moves have been disappointing but I'll still never use Chrome

So why can Brave still have that clause? That's what I don't get. I also feel like Mozilla could try to do something like "we don't ever sell your data, except this one corner case" and just explain it, but it seems like they didn't even bother. (I could be completely misunderstanding things and perhaps I'm being unfair here. It's just how it comes across to me as an uninformed doofus.)

Here's another quote: "It’s Brave’s policy to not collect personal data1 unless it’s necessary to provide services to our users, or to meet certain legal obligations. We do not buy or sell personal data about consumers." That one isn't in the feedback section.

You'd have to ask Braves lawyers. It could just be that Mozilla is more risk averse, perhaps brave thinks they won't be sued.

It would be nice if they were clearer, but I think they don't want to (or legally cant) define exactly what they do.

If this one corner case is the reason, why doesn't Mozilla put it into the legal text? I feel like the ambiguity hurts their position here. That Mozilla is silent about specifics in the legal text, seems rather scary to me.

Have you tried waterfox?

Buying the company usually means buying all of their user information as well. Other companies can change their policies too. I think you should judge them by their actions, and give them a chance to answer your questions before you condemn them.

(Did you try asking them about your concerns?)

That's fair, but that requires the trust that they won't add any collection without telling people. And it seems like they kind of want a license for all data I enter into the browser, which again Brave doesn't seem to do. It's like Mozilla is going out of their way to look shady and to harm trust. It's sad. I've been using Firefox for a looong time until I left it behind.

Since there are alternatives, I don't find that argument too compelling. I'm hoping people will continue to speak up about this though. Ideally I would want Mozilla to do better with their policy, assuming they actually act nice and just aren't very good at making their policy sound like it.

Because it's not one corner case. There are multiple - they have other sponsors and advertisers.

The problem with forks is that you need to trust the original party (Mozilla) AND the developer of the fork. Also, that fork will inevitably lag in security updates coming from the original party.

Firefox is still pretty customizable with user and enterprise policies, and most telemetry can be disabled. They have shown that they listen to their userbase, even if capitalism forces the for-profit part to make cuestionable decisions.

Used Firefox for god knows how long. Reading your post made me want to try out Waterfox and I must say I really really like it so far. Gonna keep using it and maybe I'll even uninstall Firefox down the line.

While I can understand not wanting to trust corporations and Mozilla has definitely become more corporate over the years, if they ever start to collect data without the ability to opt out, by (european) law, they need to inform the user about the data collection. So for now, I don't see much reason to be alarmed.

trust that they won’t add any collection without telling people.

It's open source so you can inspect it. If you don't know how to do that you can pay for a 3rd party audit.

Also if it were to be found out, even without being open source via some pack inspection (e.g. using a software that checks if data is being sent to a server, e.g. imagine starting Firefox on a virtual machine then checking if any data goes to e.g. firefox.com) and it were to be published then their entire brand would be dead. So rationally speaking I don't think that's a worthwhile bet.

They collect personal data before you even have the chance to opt out which is a clear violation of the GDPR. They promise to delete it within 30 days when you opt out, but is was collected nonetheless.

No, that has changed since almost 3 years.

Source: https://www.waterfox.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox/

Please verify before you accidentally spread misinformation.

Don't trust them. Trust open-source.

Use forks, and donate to known projects that exist for (at least) a few years.

Dunno. Ive already left. Now its on them to give me a good enough reason to consider going back.

I remember that too.

BTW, Waterfox is a fork of FF ;)

To where?

I need to manually opt out?

No need to rush a decision, give it a swirl and you will see ;)

I feel more sadness than anger. Like I feel a lot more sad realizing younger people will probably not be able to experiment a free and truly personal web, like the elders among us did. That corporate-free Web used to be the norm... with its clumsiness and its many quirks, its ability to tolerate conflicting opinions too. Now, everything is policed and so... neutered. It's also ad-saturated. It has turned into a TV, just worse.

Seeing Mozilla take that pitiful road made we feel a lot more sadness than anger, really. They were one of the few that were supposed to stand for another model. But I was not that surprised either...

Slap yourself. Don't accept defeat. Rage, rage against the dying of the 'net

Which brings me to Phoenix for Firefox...

The advice I've always read is to avoid forks because they usually get security updates slower than the main browser. Is that true of waterfox?

Waterfox, brave, many options.

Brave is shit I don't know why people keep recommending it.

Use a Firefox fork that respects you

Ok

Maybe I’m just an old, cynical man (I’m 44) but it’s not like their policy forces them to follow it, I mean why trust that “they promised they won’t do it in their policy” means they won’t just do it anyway without telling anyone?

I think it's mostly a defence against getting sued if they got caught. Chrome can point at their policy and get the case dismissed, Firefox would have to defend it in court and risk losing.

But you are absolutely correct, privacy policy's are only as binding as your ability to enforce them, and you and I don't really have any means to enforce them against a large Corp.

That'll eventually die the same way Firefox does because forks only survive by way of subsidized capabilities off of the work of the Firefox engineering team.

There is no winning here.

i'm going to be one of the last holdouts; refusing to switch to a chromium based browser. lol

Can you suggest one? Obvious it's not LibreWolf due to lack of respect.

What's wrong with LW?

They broke saving passwords workflow and disabled that popup to do it.

You can turn it on in settings. I use it and it works fine.

Shit post

You had me until you propped up brave as the good guy. I would sooner trust opera than brave. They’ve already been caught being sheisters with your data.

Which version do you use?