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Why's everyone freaking out about Firefox Terms of Service? Isn't it Open Source?
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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I'm a software developer, and understand the technicalities and options available to me. I am capable of forking Firefox and make myself a custom build with anything I don't like stripped out. (Capable of, not wanting to.)
They removed "We don't sell your data and we never will" from their FAQ and they added "We may sell your data" to the ToS.
I am unhappy about this change. It is a clear sign that the people in charge of Firefox want to sell user data, and that the irrecoverable enshittification path has been chosen. It means that at some point in the next few years, I can't trust Firefox' with my privacy. And they sure as fuck don't have anything else going for them: The browser eats memory and freezes my camera during video conferencing, and is plain not supported in some of the software I use at work.
The rationale is probably something entirely reasonable, like "While we do not intend to sell user data, the phrasing was too vague and not helpful. What is selling, and what is user data, really?" An organization with strong privacy values would be so far from anything "bad" that the phrasing as it was would not be a problem for them.
It's irrelevant that right now privacy settings and xyz and telmentry is clear and opt in etc. Because the point is that they are gearing up to change that. The settings will be less clear, user data will be separated into shit like "operability assistance", "personal information", "experience improvement metrics" with some of it enabled by default because, etc.
The rationalization they have given is that legally, they may have been seeking data all along, as some jurisdictions define it extremely loosely.
For example, if you use their translation feature, they are sending the page your looking at (data) to a third party, which provides a benefit to Mozilla. Thats technically a sale in some laws, but most would agree that is acceptable given the user asked for it to happen.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/
I'm overall concerned with Mozilla, but not sure this is malicious yet. But definitely needs to be closely scrutinized.
Something to note, however, is that the new terms apply to the browser as a whole. If it was due to some of the opt-in services the browser includes (sync, account, translation, etc.), they could have specified the terms apply to those services instead.
Agree this isn't necessarily malicious yet, but it definitely is not beneficial to users.