Hot off the back of its recent leadership rejig, Mozilla has announced users of Firefox will soon be subject to a ‘Terms of Use’ policy — a first for the iconic open source web browser.
This official Terms of Use will, Mozilla argues, offer users ‘more transparency’ over their ‘rights and permissions’ as they use Firefox to browse the information superhighway — as well well as Mozilla’s “rights” to help them do it, as this excerpt makes clear:
You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet.
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.
Also about to go into effect is an updated privacy notice (aka privacy policy). This adds a crop of cushy caveats to cover the company’s planned AI chatbot integrations, cloud-based service features, and more ads and sponsored content on Firefox New Tab page.
The only acceptable privacy policy for a browser is “we won’t fucking look into anything, take anything, nor send anything anywhere you didn’t actually wish to send explicitly”.
Firefox have an extension system. If mozilla wants to bloat it, they should do it via extension, so that they’re not bloating the actually useful part. As it is, all they’re doing is forcing more work on people to manage forks to remove all the shit every time they push a release.
Where’s the gofundme for the firefox fork project?
Was this from google turning off the funding tap?
I’ve been willingly enabling data collection features for Mozilla but I guess that time is revolute, they don’t feel trustworthy anymore.
Same here. Just turned off all data collection checkboxes. Fuck Mozilla!
Wtf is happening, why is now even Firefox going off the rails?
You missed the previous memo: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growth-planning-updates/
This comment under the article gave me a chuckle.
So now what the hell do we have to use to not be spied upon?
Well I suppose LibreWolf (or some other de-branded Firefox) will become more mainstream. Similar to what chromium is to chrome 🤷
That’s not a real equivalence.
Chromium is the basis for Google Chrome, while Librewolf is nothing more than a leech to Firefox. It’s just Firefox, rebranded.
Rebranded, pre-cleaned of all the forced stuff from mozilla, with the built-in integration of more privacy-enhancing features.
So, not “just firefox, rebranded” at all.
Soon other web engine will coming, first LadyBird browser and two is Servo Browser. But they’re still along way to go
Am I missing something on Servo Browser? Because when I went to check it out and seems more like next-gen browser engine that looks to be an improvement on Firefox’s Gecko. If so then we will need to wait for a browser team to adopt it.
Servo is also building a web browser UI.
does this affect forks?
What the fuck?
waterfox waterfox waterfox
Man all this makes me want to just use Links2 for everything and being a luddite. Complete with cabin in the woods. So frustrating.
There’s a links2!?!?!?
Good thing LibreWolf and other forks exist, including hard forks like the Goanna browsers.
Privacy policies should legally be called surveillance policies.
Or “Invasion of Privacy” Policy
AI is going to fail, and it can’t happen soon enough. The Mozilla leadership really needs to pay attention to that reality.
It’s not going to disappear, it has its place, but its not going to be shoehorned into every single thing.
Sorry, I realized I’m using my personal jargon in public again. When I said “AI,” I meant this overhyped put-it-in-your-mouse garbage. When I’m talking about the actually useful stuff, I usually call it “ML.”
Of course you have no reason to know that or care. My apologies.
Mozilla leadership needs to be removed
100%. I can’t decide whether I think the organization being dissolved completely is a good idea or not, but I’m at least open to it.
Well, we had a good run lads, enshitification is here.
Any recommendations for open source alternatives that are convenient and also have an android app supporting ublock origin.
Not really open source, but want to mention it anyways. Take a look at the Norwegian browser Vivaldi. I made the switch recently and am really happy with it. Their privacy policy seems good, and they have a clear no AI stance. Their android browser is by far the best android browser from a UX standpoint in my opinion.
I might be biased as a Norwegian 😉
Mange tak! 😁
Waterfox
Librewolf, Servo looks promising but is very far off and just an engine I think? Idk I keep looking at it and want it.
Servo isn’t a full browser, it’s a tech testbed for Mozilla to test out their various rewritten Rust components. I wish they would have promoted it to full browser status, but I think intention was always to take pieces of Servo as they were completed and drop them into Firefox.
Damn, maybe I can’t read but I didnt find that info on their page.
Hmm seems like it’s only partially true these days. Looking at their webpage they have a screenshot of their Wikipedia entry (why they didn’t just link to it I have no idea) that provides some more up to date info. It was a testbed and they mention a project Quantum where the tech was added into Firefox’s Gecko engine. In 2020 Mozilla laid off all their Servo devs and handed the project over to Linux Foundation Europe. It seems like since then they’ve reenvisioned the project as an embeddable rendering engine similar to WebKit or V8.
librewolf on pc and ironfox on android. both forks of firefox.
+1 for LibreWolf. Dialy driver and not looking back.
Ice Raven on Android.
This is my pair as well
Why IronFox over fennec?
More privacy related defaults. Essentially the about:config is more or less filled out for you on Ironfox.
Danke danke
Yeesh. So what’s an alternative?
To add to the list:
Mullvad browser (pc only) (removes blobs,proprietary crap, telemetry, and is otherwise hardened and was developed in partnership with the tor org. Some prefs are fine to change but you’re best off by leaving as is.
Tor browser - nuff said. If you want anonymity use this. Don’t change any prefs.
Arkenfox has a nodded user.is file you can simply drop into your current ff profile dir. It includes many hidden prefs and settings and allows you to customize for your needs/threat model.
Arkenfox’s mods are used by other privacy friendly browsers. As are some tor mods.
If you can find your way around about:config and don’t mind some learning, you can achieve most of the results of hardened broswers.
There are guides to further harden your ff. Search for Hardened Firefox.
waterfox
LibreWolf, or if you can tolerate some breakage, PaleMoon or Basilisk (I say ‘if you can tolerate some breakage’ because Goanna is hard-forked from old ESR code, and PaleMoon and Basilisk are both Goanna-based).
As I understand it, these changes don’t affect browsers that use FF as a base, so Zen Browser might not be affected.
I’ve been trying it out this week, and it’s good. And can still use all the FF extensions.
Chromium I guess? Let’s wait and see first.
How in the absolute fuck is chromium an alternative?
I’m very happy with librewolf on desktop and ironfox on mobile
Same.
