Important context!
They had to change this because newer laws like the CCPA classify some ways of transferring/processing data as a “sale”, even if no money is exchanged.
See: this Firefox FAQ where they say:
The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”
Similar privacy laws exist in other US states, including in Virginia and Colorado. And that’s a good thing — Mozilla has long been a supporter of data privacy laws that empower people — but the competing interpretations of do-not-sell requirements does leave many businesses uncertain about their exact obligations and whether or not they’re considered to be “selling data.”
In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our privacy notice. Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
We’re continuing to make sure that Firefox provides you with sensible default settings that you can review during onboarding or adjust at any time.
As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”
Yes. That is selling. If you exchange customer data for money or other valuables, that is the definition of “selling”.
Not in all cases.
As an example, Firefox has the option of sponsored results, which send anonymized technical data when a link is clicked, essentially just saying “hey, this got an ad click, add it to the total.” It doesn’t send info about you, your identity, or your other browsing habits.
This counts as a “sale” even though no actual identifying information about you was exchanged. They mention this in the paragraphs I attached, when they talk about data sent via OHTTP.
I don’t think any reasonable person would consider a packet being sent saying “some unknown user, somewhere in the world clicked your sponsored post” as “selling your personal information”, but that’s how the CCPA could be used to classify it, so to avoid getting in legal trouble, Firefox can’t technically say that they “never sell your data”, even if that’s the extent of it.
This counts as a “sale” even though no actual identifying information about you was exchanged. They mention this in the paragraphs I attached, when they talk about data sent via OHTTP.
I mean… it should count as a sale, because it’s a sale. They are selling information about browsing habits for money. Regardless of whether they include identifying information, it is still personal data that they are selling. They removed that line from their FAQs because they changed their minds about selling personal data. It has fuck all to do with weird legal definitions. They promised they wouldn’t ever sell personal data, and then they were like “wellll…”
“Selling personal data” and “selling ads that we can tell if they are clicked by an anonymous user” are completely different, in my eyes at least.
“Selling personal data” sounds like someone taking your personally identifiable information and giving it to someone for money. What they’re doing isn’t that, so they’re not “selling personal data”
They’re selling ad views, not your information.
Ok, but it’s providing information to advertisers about your activity, right? When I click on something, Firefox sells that information. Whether you consider it “personal data” is irrelevant; it is data about me: my actions.
You seem to be pretty hell-bent on defending Mozilla here. You work for them or something? It really is very simple. They started out more idealistic, but then they realized that things are expensive and there’s money to be made, so they sold out a little. It happens.
They’re selling “someone, somewhere clicked your ad”. That’s it. No other data about you is ever sent.
You seem to be pretty hell-bent on defending Mozilla here. You work for them or something?
Nope. (though for transparency, I have briefly talked to someone who does currently work for them) I just want my browser to continue being funded, and if they can do something that is extremely privacy-preserving that doesn’t rely on Google (who gives them the majority of their money) for revenue, then I will be in favor of that existing as an option, and I won’t justify acting as though “ping that says someone somewhere clicked this ad” is the same as “we have received money in exchange for giving up your browsing history”
They started out more idealistic, but then they realized that things are expensive and there’s money to be made, so they sold out a little. It happens.
Which is unfortunate. I wish they didn’t have to do things like this, because at the end of the day, ads are still ads. I just think that it’s silly to say that they are selling your information, when the information being sold is in no way identifying, which is why I think I’m coming off as defensive here. (sorry for that, I’m bad at doing tone in replies online)
The alternative is just Mozilla paywalling features, heavily pushing other in-house ones like their VPN (which is just Mullvad but more expensive), or having to be more dependent on Google, and I don’t want that. This just feels incredibly reasonable to me in comparison.
That data is about as personal as someone sitting in a park keeping a tally of how many people with a blue jacket walk by. “Somebody posted a comment on lemmy” is not the same as “@elbucho@lemmy.world posted a comment on lemmy”.
Particularly if you opt out (as I have) and no tally mark is added for you.
Which is convenient, because now when they decide they do want to sell your data, it’s fine because their privacy policy doesn’t say it anymore!
Man. I want to root for Mozilla, but they are definitely looking down the barrel of enshittification.
Its not “sale” that is being defined too broadly, its “personal information”. If you sell a view counter total number, thats not anyones personal data. Anyone would agree that you are " selling" information. But how does information get classified as “personal” ? Thats the real question IMO. If mozilla isnt focusing on that part, i think its a reason to be suspicious.
But I don’t want them doing that. I don’t want my browser sharing any of my browsing activity, anonymized or not.
And they clarify that you can choose to have them not do that.
It’s a switch. It’s clearly marked. It literally says “sponsored”.
All those things they listed I would also consider selling my data. Even if you are offering my info in exchange for peanut butter cookies, you are trading it for something else.
Then donate!
They are in this situation because they have to keep up with chrome’s capabilities _ velocity with a team that’s 1/4 the size at best.
Essentially they have to produce more with less and they have a funding problem. Almost all of their funding goes into software engineering salaries.
At the risk of not being able to keep up and becoming an obsolete web browser leaving Chrome as the only dominant one there is a shitty position of being the bad guy so that you can get money.
In short, I sympathize with the reasons why they are having to do this even if I greatly dislike them. Reality is complicated.
Thank you. I was hoping this would be among the top upvoted comments.
Important context!
They had to change this because newer laws like the CCPA classify some ways of transferring/processing data as a “sale”, even if no money is exchanged.
What? No. Do you really think their “sharing” with “partners” who are “providing sponsored suggestions” doesn’t involve money being exchanged? 🤔
Here is an abridged version of that FAQ entry consisting only of substrings of it:
The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because […] to make Firefox commercially viable […] we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar
All of the other words in there implying that they had to stop promising not to sell user data because of some (implied to be unreasonable) “LEGAL definition” of “sale” is imo insulting to the reader.
This isn’t reassuring. They’re saying they don’t receive money for my personal data, but they do give it to other businesses in exchange for something valuable. To me, that’s selling my data.
That said, I do appreciate the context.
Edit: I also appreciate the work Mozilla is doing, and in fact I am a monthly donor.
As I understand it using Google as the default search provider counts - Google pay Mozilla to have that as the default option, and your search queries are sent to Google from Firefox when you search, thus Mozilla are benefiting financially from your search query data. That’s been the case for years, it’s just that the privacy legislation has wider definitions now.
Yes we all know mozilla sucks, still ff is the best browser by far
Lesser of two evils
Wayyyyyyy lesser.
We’re talking Mussolini versus your local grocery store clerk who’s a dick sometimes.
I agree
Even at the same level it would be the preferable browser to stop Google from doing whatever they wanted.
Three. There are three evils in the browser space.
Ehhhh Microsoft edge is just chrome that steals your data for Microsoft rather than Google. It’s like 2 different bank robbers that use the same brand of gun to hold you hostage.
Safari is the third, not edge.
Who is the third one?
Blue checkmarks fund Nazis
Theo is a shill and product expert masquerading as a 10x developer when at best he’s an intermediate web dev
Not even intermediate. He makes so many bad calls that it’s honestly great to watch him to know what not to do. You’ll be right about 95+% of the time.
I had to stop watching him though because I’d spend hours writing up comments to correct everything he said.
I realized when he was talking about mongodb and completely failed to understand the issue he had with it was strictly a design issue created by the team he worked with (or potentially by him)
Some blue checks are still unpaid legacy ones. But that’s usually large celebs. Probably not the case with this guy.
What browser do you use Lmao
lynx
Things I’m not surprised about:
-
that someone remembering would mention it
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that the home site for it looks like it’s from 1997
Things I’m surprised about:
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Lynx is still supported (the oldest browser that is)
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that the latest version number is so low
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that someone mentioning it wouldn’t also say they use Arch btw
For the record, it’s slackware.
links2 -g better.
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Not ironic variations on that theme are available here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
Mosaic and iCab?
Fuck that guy, all he does is make ragebait
i hate that fucking guy and his fucking mustache
Oh cool unjustified FUD
Didn’t Firefox just release a new feature that prevents fingerprinting? Hard to get a reading on Mozilla these days.
It’s because people looked at a line of a diff without looking at the actual context.
It’s like finding the line in a diff where someone deleted a call to “check password” and concluding that this means the service is no longer verifying passwords.https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/
We never sell your personal data. Unlike other big tech companies that collect and profit off your personal information, we’re built with privacy as the default. We don’t know your age, gender, precise location, or other information Big Tech collects and profits from.
Basically, they consolidated and clarified their data privacy policies to be legally accurate. People took a content change to be a policy change on the assumption that you can’t just delete words in one place and put new ones somewhere else.
Ha. I’d expect nothing less from Theo.
precise location
Wtf does that even mean? Why would they need that in the first place?
They don’t. They’re saying they don’t have it.
throw std::future_error(std::make_error_code(std::future_errc::broken_promise));
Theo to me had the same energy as Pirate Software. One of these days there’s gonna be some cancelling, someone mark these words.
Been on Librewolf for several months now, can’t recommend it enough.
I also use Librewolf but I can’t really recommend it to normal users because its fingerprint resistance is extremely aggressive and often degrades the experience.
The only thing I’ve had to tweak it for was being able to scan QR codes for payments. Haven’t come across any other issues at all.
Random tangent, but I tried PaleMoon to see if it used less RAM these days.
…And it seems they’ve forked pretty hard. All the rendering acceleration is years behind FF, and frankly it lagged on the test page (a web app text editor) I was interested in.
Being years behind Firefox is kinda the whole point of PaleMoon, the user interface is based on Firefox 4-28 and the rendering engine (Goanna) was forked from Gecko back in 2016 to remove all the new stuff Mozilla kept adding to it.
switched to librewolf and ironfox at least a year ago or more.
I know this is humor lemmy, but is this real?
Yes, but out of context. They refactored their policies to make them legally correct, this was an intermediate step. There is another comment with the current policies linked in it.
Damn. Shame I need a browser on Windows, Linux, iOS and android. Which is why I’ve been using Firefox for so long.
The post is just misinformation to act like they removed it. See ricecake’s comment above. https://programming.dev/comment/20479780
well… fuck.
The post is just misinformation to act like they removed it. See ricecake’s comment above. https://programming.dev/comment/20479780
