this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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If they are selling aggregate data like "x percentage of our users are on Windows 10, y percentage on Windows 11, z percentage on Linux" they are technically selling user data. Honestly, if that's all they are doing, I don't really mind it. It's the selling of individual user data that I take issue with.
Are aggregated and anonymized statistics all they're selling? If that were the case, Mozilla executives have had many opportunities to say so. They haven't.
Yeah, selling metric data is fine
I'm personally not yet concerned by this, but I will say I imagine it's less "percent of users on which OS" and more" "percent of users clicking this link" or "time spent spent by users on this page". Which is used for more greasy advertising, which I hate, but manage to block pretty well.
I object to Mozilla measuring stuff like that in the first place (even for its own use), never mind selling it. It's simply none of their fucking business what OS people use.
I mean, it is pretty relevant to know baseline specifications of their user's hardware. Sorta hard to know if there is value in developing for Linux if you don't know how many users you have.
First of all, Linux needs Firefox in a way that commercial OSs with their own first-party browsers (IE/Edge for Windows, Safari for MacOS, and Chrome for Android/ChromeOS) do not, so no, Mozilla should not be measuring anything to "know if there is value in developing for Linux." There is value, a priori. Mozilla, supposedly having similar goals to the rest of the Free Software movement, knows this -- or at least, should know it.
Second, whether such information is valuable to them has absolutely fuck-all to do with whether they're entitled to it or not. Your social security number is valuable to a scammer; does that mean he should have it?!
Any business will be looking to increase profit, which I think we both agree on. While you took my example to be very literal, I meant it more in a general sense.
A different metaphor would be like a restaurant deciding what meals to serve. A diner could decide to add other options for a burger when they see that they sell a lot of them. Or they could decide not to invest in bringing a more expensive alternative like the meatless patties when their other vegetarian options aren't big sellers.
Gathering information like that is simply part of a data set that lets companies try and be more successful. It's not about entitlement, it's a component of operating a business.
I already said this to the other guy, but I guess you missed it: treating Firefox development like a "business" is part of the problem! Hell, it might very well be the whole problem!
When the discussion becomes about a "company" being "successful" and not "a project" being designed to best "serve its users," that's how you can tell the thing has jumped the fucking shark.
What if instead of a company it's an organization, and instead of being successful it's about giving a quality service? Do you think that organization has it in their patrons best interest to improve their service?
Firefox can become a better piece of software by improving in areas it is lacking. If it sees that windows use has dropped, it can investigate that to provide a better product.
If Firefox didn't collect analytics, it wouldn't have even the slightest idea of who they are reaching and how to give those users a better experience. It also can give insight on the users they aren't reaching, and creates an opportunity to reach more people.
Because I don't know about you, but I'd wager that most developers want their software to be used, and they also want feedback on how they can improve their product. Collected analytics are a necessary piece of any continued, successful development.
Unless Firefox was developed by a single person, intended for absolute personal use, collecting certain data points is required.
And that is true for any piece of software.
Spying on users is fundamentally incompatible with being a quality product.
Firefox isn't a fucking "service," by the way. Products and services are different things, and I think a big reason for the corporate encroachment on our property rights is that corporations deliberately try to conflate the two in order to gaslight us into accepting them having more control than they deserve. In fact, your comment is a perfect example of how people have been swindled that way.
I guess the point that I'm not explaining well enough is the implication that this isn't spying when you're talking about things as abstracted as what OS a user is using.
You're very obviously stuck in the specific example of firefox and have a large difficulty in making a larger observation on the ideas that I'm offering.
The simplest response I have is this:
Firefox has changed over the years. Understanding their user base to create a better product is a good thing. This includes collecting technical data that is relevant to the performance of their product. This is still a good thing. It is a bad thing if they take this data and sell it as an additional profit avenue.
No, you're explaining it just fine. Don't try to condescendingly imply that anyone who disagrees with you must just be too stupid to understand.
In reality, I fully understand your argument and and am still saying that you're wrong. Collecting data about the user that they didn't explicitly opt in to giving you is spying, end of. It doesn't matter what the data is or what supposed justification you have for it.
If Mozilla really needs to know that badly what OS their users are using, they can do all sorts of other things: they could measure downloads of the installers for different OSs from their website. They could send out surveys. They could ask websites what user-agent strings are being reported (which is also problematic -- by default, Firefox ought to leave that field of the HTTP header blank -- but at least the user is affirmatively choosing to communicate with that site). They don't have to make Firefox phone home. They choose to make it phone home because that's cheap and lazy, but when it comes at the cost of users' privacy that's a 100% unethical trade-off to make!
Unfortunately the way the real world works, companies use this information to figure out where to put more money developing features, fixing bugs, etc.
I work at a fintech company, and when you use our software, we get information about your device such as OS Version, GPU (incl driver version) , CPU, network driver, amount of RAM and various network statistics. We aren't selling this data to other parties we just collect it for use ub troubleshooting your issue and in determining how much effort to put toward certain things. Our app works in Linux but we don't officially support it, this is backed by the fact that the user population is in a fraction of a percent compared to Windows and Mac users 🤷♂️ I wish we would fix the Linux app to be up to par with the other two, but it doesn't make sense based on the data we have.
That kind of information is useful in all sorts of decision making that isn't necessarily what you commonly think of as "they're using/selling my data!"
Do you understand how your anecdote is irrelevant?
It is right and good for open source projects to have very different structure and motivation than for-profit corporations. The failure of the organization that makes Firefox to be different in that way is part of the problem here!
Most of what I said applies to organizations developing software, it doesn't matter if it's open source or not. Firefox isn't some hobbyist project on github.