LWD
So do you actually draw the line at Mozilla never building stuff like this into their browser, or is that a line you would be willing to cross too?
I won't trust the AI Mozilla uses until they show us the source data. Not the source code that consumes a massive binary blob; the stuff that generated the binary blob they are using.
The language is confusing, and Mozilla should fix it themselves.
The important takeaway is: data is sent over an IP address controlled by Google, to a remote server, running Google software. No processing is taking place on someone's local computer.
If Mozilla is engaging in unethical behavior that publicly violates its own alleged principles, people can point it out.
But sure, here are a few suggestions:
- Continue finding white label services they can sell, such as Mozilla VPN
- Create a donation system using GNU Taler that you can put towards websites you visit, like brave Rewards already has.
- Allow users to give donations explicitly to Firefox development instead of Mozilla itself.
- End the $65 million in donations towards AI.
- Follow typical market forces and lower the CEO pay instead of raising it by nearly $2 million.
Thanks for the link to the privacy policy. You notice, at the bottom, it has links to both "About Mozilla" and "About FakeSpot"?
When you run the Orbit extension, it connects to two domains with every request:
- orbitbymozilla.com
- prod.orbit-ml-front-api.fakespot.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net
There's FakeSpot again.
And FakeSpot has a terrible privacy policy that allows sale of private data directly to advertisers.
It's unclear to me what the mobile Firefox homepage even is. It doesn't increase the tab count, it just sort of hovers over your screen. And you can get to it by either pressing the Home button or the New Tab button; both of these do almost the same thing.
What are you talking about? This is the Firefox community, not many people are going to stop mid-post to say "BTW I hate Google more"
... BTW, I hate Google more.
And you're incorrect: the community for leaving Google is more than four times the size of the community about Google.
As of August 2024, diaspora* is the only actively developed project classified under the tradition fediverse term that doesn't support ActivityPub.
The effectiveness of the internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.
- Mozilla Manifesto, Principle 6, emphasis mine
Like all products, Firefox still maintains a small core of uncritical, devoted fans. To them, Mozilla can do no wrong.
The problem is, up until a few months ago, Mozilla advocated for privacy and other public facing values that lined up with their manifesto. Now, they are breaking away from that, and the true believers are shifting too: becoming hostile to privacy.
The people who liked Firefox because of its privacy stance, or because they were looking for an alternative to Big Tech, on the other hand, aren't 100% likely to become a true believer, and those people are the critics. Often, those critics have been around for years going on decades.
I recently downloaded Firefox Nightly and noticed some new settings that were enabled by default:
- Suggestions from Firefox Nightly
Get suggestions from the web related to your search- Suggestions from sponsors
Support Firefox Nightly with occasional sponsored suggestions
The link in the UI doesn't mention sponsorships anywhere. But this page does:
Who are Mozilla’s partners for sponsored suggestions?
We partner with organizations to serve up some of these suggestion types... For sponsored results, we primarily work with adMarketplace, while also providing non-sponsored results from Wikipedia.
This page links to the adMarketplace Privacy Policy which makes it pretty clear this company is okay with collecting your IP address and passing it to further unnamed entities.
Elsewhere, they say Firefox sends them "the number of times Firefox suggests or displays specific content and your clicks on that content, as well as basic data about your interactions with Firefox Suggest", and then will share interaction information "in an aggregate manner with our partners".
Update: Switched the link from the Desktop to the Mobile version. Added more quotes from FF, and bolded info about their one named AdTech partner.
Done in Boost.
