Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.
Acceptable Use Policy links to https://www.mozilla.org/about/legal/acceptable-use/ which says "You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[...]Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence"
It's against the Terms of Use to use Firefox to... watch porn?
Either their legal team made a mistake, in which case they should correct it and issue an apology ASAP, or they really do intend to own you, in which case I recommend switching to an alternative browser which is only a browser, like Dillo, Ladybird, or Netsurf.
So only bookmarks of porn sites if you have Sync active, sending porn tabs to a Firefox instance on another device, browsing porn while on the Mozilla VPN, or using Firefox Relay to sign up to a porn website with an anonymous email address
Fine by me since I don't use a Mozilla account, but sounds to me like I shouldn't get a Mozilla account either
It's pretty odd if you aren't allowed to use their VPN to watch or share porn
- send unsolicited communications (for example cold emailing an employer about a job)
- Deceive or mislead (for example inviting your brother over for a surprise party under false pretenses)
- Purchase legal controlled products (for example sending the pharmacy a refill for your Xanax)
- Collect email addresses without permission (for example putting together a list of emails to contact public officials)
They might clarify that in the agreement. I doubt many people are intimately familiar with Mozilla, Firefox, 'services', etc. to distinguish. I am and I didn't think of it in a brief reading (which is all I have time for).
And yet these terms of service—for Firefox—specifically apply the AUP to “your use of Firefox,” no?
The entire AUP is prefixed “You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to:”. There’s nothing in the AUP that doesn’t refer to “Mozilla’s services.” When the Firefox TOS explicitly includes this AUP, how could it make sense unless they think of Firefox as one of their services?
At the risk of restating the gp’s quote:
> Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.
Mozilla VPN is a service Mozilla provides though. White-labelled Mullvad or not, it a contract between Mozilla and the user and therefore presumably covered by this terms of use.
I would say porn is probably in the top 3 if not number 1 use for VPNs
Welp, they stopped being open source, then. From the OSD:
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
Mozilla's management and legal has always been amazing when it comes to unforced errors. These changes are actually pretty normal, but they're also worded more scarily by being more encompassing than they need to be. Mozilla has always sucked when it comes to communicating with the outside world.
The squeeze on any content that religious people find 'yucky' is double-pronged in the US - encouraged both by governments and businesses. Paypal, Visa, Mastercard et al are given complete discretion over what transactions they can block, and they have already extensively used this to deprive legal NSFW platforms and creators of their income.
So, on one end, state governments are trying to strongarm NSFW services by imposing draconian requirements that ask users to submit their private data to some random opaque 'benevolent' third party business - and on the other, payment processors are using their legal right to refuse whatever transaction for any reason so they can starve them of income.
The Puritans have been trying to ban porn here since the concept has existed, it's never stopped, and it's never going to stop. They're miserable and they want everyone else to be too. That's like most of their religion. Going to church, being ashamed of bodies, and judging people.
Confused. What do Firefox's terms of service have to do with puritanism ? Have Firefox developers become puritanist or something ? That would be extremely surprising if true. Any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) to this ?
It's gonna be a weird few years that's for sure. I'll leave it to the historians to decide when the actual tipping point was but the shift in the GOP from being run by Republicans with a few bones thrown to Conservatives every now and again when it's time to drum up votes to the show now being run by Conservatives is going to be the point between two political eras.
It's by far not the first time
this has happened but it's kinda surreal to be alive for one.
I don't think that's the problem here, as I don't want to see porn on e.g. Mozilla's forums either. There's a place and time for that content and Mozilla shouldn't be the one to decide for others. The problem is whether Firefox is a Mozilla "service" or not, and the way the terms is linked implies that it is.
I'm all down to write off contract law as "puritanism" but the rot is far deeper than an aesthetic (and frankly I'm unclear how puritanism applies to this situation at all).
EDIT: I'm not sure why porn is particularly interesting here when most internet activity seems to be potentially against terms of service.
My conspiracy theory is that gears are slowly turning to revamp the culture, redefine what’s acceptable/not acceptable and eventually suggest that if you won’t have kids you’re not accepted in the society. Basically a funky way to reverse the population decline, as the governments are realizing this problem won’t be fixed by free markets and etc.
> Either their legal team made a mistake, in which case they should correct it and issue an apology ASAP
I don't think it is a mistake but more the translation of a vision and strategy that took hundreds of meetings to be laid down very precisely.
I have nothing to back what I am gonna say but I am wondering if their strategy might be to truly become the default browser of governments who are uncomfortable having Chrome or Edge as the default browser. Especially since now they get augmented by a lot of AI.
Firefox has it largest market share in Europe and Germany it seems and with the concerns with are hearing over there about Big tech I wouldn't be surprised at some point some govs try to make their workstations Firefox only.
Also some governments are trying hard to restrict access to porn, violence and social media for children but we know it is almost impossible to do it at the network level. So they might try at the browser level with the help of Mozilla and some "sanctioned Internet AI safety" inside the browser?
I really don't know but think about it, Mozilla is a dead man walking with it's 2% market share and huge cost of maintaining one of the most complex piece of software. They have to do something about it.
What just tipped me off is reading on Wikipedia [0]:
> On February 8, 2024, Mozilla announced that Baker would be stepping down as CEO to "focus on AI and internet safety"[2] as chair of the Mozilla Foundation.
So the text of the policy itself limits its scope to Mozilla Services.
But the purpose of that section is unclear to me. If it just means you have to comply with that policy when using features that use Mozilla services, why is that section necessary, since the license for the services should already apply.
If it is trying to mean that all the terms for Mozilla services also applies to any use of Firefox... that is really clumisily written, and also just generally terrible.
I'm pretty sure this is about Mozilla services. AFAICT, Firefox itself is licensed under the https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Public_License and as such doesn't put any restrictions on how you use the software.
A bit of an issue is that the Firefox terms of use page [1] says "Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy", and the Acceptable Use Policy link points to their Acceptable Use Policy page regarding Mozilla services [2].
So either they're saying your use of Firefox, regardless of whether you want to use Mozilla services, must also follow the same acceptable use policy that your use of their services would, or it's a massively ambiguous way of saying your use of Firefox in combination with actual Mozilla services must comply with the policy.
If it's the former, their terms of use would be in conflict with the commonly understood definition of open source and free software licensing. If it's the latter, it's just poor legalese that fails to make its intent clear. (Interestingly, the Mozilla Public License does not seem to explicitly say that there are no restrictions regarding the use of the software for any particular purpose, although that is a commonly accepted part of the definition of free software and open source.)
Firefox was the last bastion of freedom on the internet and the replacements aren't ready.
> But do you think these can be a full browser replacement without extension ecosystems like ublock origin et al.?
I'm now actually trying to use qutebrowser as a replacement... it's not easy due to the lack of extensions, but mitigating factors are:
1. it has integrated adblock (though no cosmetic filtering)
2. there are userscripts to integrate with the Bitwarden CLI or a running instance of KeepassXC.
The applicable laws of North-Korea might differ than the applicable laws of Russia which may differ from the law of Qatar, etc. It might be even impossible to uphold this world wide even if you tried.
So i guess it's more a 'we at Mozilla don't want any trouble' thing.
I hate to say this but I am again surprised not by the ToS update from Mozilla but by the people who are surprised that Firefox or Mozilla is doing this.
May be I am way too cynical than average people. What is being stated here is actually inline of what they think is right. They think watching Porn is wrong. Which is why you shouldn't use Firefox to watch porn, or anything else they deemed wrong.
And that is speaking from someone who joined the Firefox 1.0 New York Times Ad.
I guess we will all have to do it again. This time for Ladybird.
No they are not. They are saying exactly: "You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[...]Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence"
Firefox-the-browser isn't a service, it's a product. Their services are things like profile syncing. It makes sense to me that they wouldn't want content on their servers that they could get in legal trouble for hosting.
Mozilla's ToS applies for Firefox's use, and this is literally written by Mozilla themselves:
“Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy”
There's no distinction between the browser and Mozilla's online services here.
---
And even if it were referring only to features such as “profile syncing” (and it doesn't refer only to that), does this mean that people can't have bookmarks to porn? And why would Mozilla care about how people use profile syncing at all? I thought it was e2e encrypted.
So, as someone else pointed out, saving bookmarks of porn and using their bookmarks sync service would be a problem.
It's easy to laugh and dismiss that. But what if you're a journalist covering war? You're going to have plenty of bookmarks of graphic violence, and therefore run afoul of this license.
I might have differed with Brendan Eich on a few matters, but he was a good steward of Firefox in my book.
When Mitchell Baker took the reins, Mozilla became rather more heavy-handed towards us - the irony being that Waterfox was once proudly displayed on the Mozilla website under their "Powered By" banner.
I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces, but they've made some peculiar decisions as of late.
On one hand, they're finally implementing features users have been clamouring for ages (tab groups, vertical tabs and the likes) - on the other, rather odd policy choices.
I should point out, it seems daft to me when others suggest using forks with no well-established governance of their own, essentially shifting trust from an organisation at least answerable to certain regulations, to individuals with no proper framework or guidelines.
I've done my best with Waterfox over the years to have it represented by a proper legal entity with policies to follow; so if anyone is interested take a look.
Here's my question: in light of what Mozilla is doing, why don't other forks like Waterfox or Librewolf write a manifesto/contract saying they'll never sell your user data and won't turn "evil" (until they do, of course), and then decide to offer a paid version of their browser.
Two possible outcomes:
1. No one cares. No one pays for it. Nothing changes and nobody loses anything.
2. Enough people pay for it to keep the product healthy and the user-centric promise alive. The Internet is saved.
So why isn't anyone trying to replace Mozilla yet, with a more sane business model than living on the back of Google's fear of antitrust investigation? What's the worse that can happen?
Just sell a bonafide paid version alongside the free one, don't just rely on donations. There is a massive difference between offering a paid product and begging passers-by to spare some change.
The problem with paid versions, is that I don't really trust them either. MBA creep will happen and suddenly the TOS changes and my paid tier is going to have data collection and 'some' ads. I have to move to a high tier to avoid them. After a few cycles of that, one day all the tiers have data collection and ads.
I am at the point where I would happily pay an annual subscription on the order of a few hundred dollars per year just to avoid the headaches of today's browsers. Don't add new features, don't change the look of anything, just give me security updates and bug fixes. The only problem with this model is what we saw happen to the streaming services; paying to avoid ads just means your data is worth that much more. Paying for a higher-tier plan is a signal that you have a greater level of disposable income, and are hence more valuable to advertisers.
When this topic has been discussed on Hacker News in the past, it has also been pointed out that developing a browser with feature parity to Firefox or Chrome would be prohibitively expensive.
This idea of having an moral alignment covenant I think is a great one. I'm fed up of being bait-and-switched by companies that get buy-in by being open and friendly, and then later they decide to kill the golden goose. If you're committed to FOSS then commit! Make it official so that people can trust that you're not going to enshittify later.
Most of the other "forks" (e.g. Librewolf) are just patches on top of vanilla Firefox sources, so it's really not a whole lot to scrutinize by hand. I've skimmed at least most of the patch files personally just out of curiosity. In my distro of choice, NixOS, the sources are built by Hydra or my local machine, so I'm not trusting that their binaries match the source either.
That makes it a bit easier to trust, but it does run into the issue that it stops working if Mozilla hits a certain level of untrustworthiness.
To put that number in perspective, drawing just 1% of that down each year and putting in a bank account earning interest would fund 100 engineers on $500k/year indefinitely.
Yeah Mozilla at this point is really like the kid riding the bike and putting a stick in his own front tire meme. I had an interview with them years ago and even then it was clear they were wasting time on the most pointless bureaucracy while Firefox was languishing. Doesn’t google literally give them millions a year to exist? Like idk if I can even think of something more mismanaged than Mozilla.
> I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces
The wobble seems to somewhat artificial. I'm having trouble believing Firefox could ever not be able to afford to continue browser development — there are way too many interests at stake. Google alone would have no choice but to bail Firefox out because Chrome can't be the only browser without being regulated to hell and back.
Google providing most of their funding is a fact, and that this provides a large amount of leverage over what Firefox can do is obvious. So how is the balancing act artificial?
For it to be self-imposed there needs to be an comparable amount of money ready to spring forth if Google ever pulled out that Mozilla is somehow keeping a lid on.
I don't see how a regulated entity is better in any way than an individual.
We repeatedly see attacks on freedom and privacy by the people who are supposed to protect them, those so-called "regulators": chatcontrol, recent UK backdoor wishes, repeated French proposals to enforce DRM even on opensource. And I wouldn't even google Russia, China, or other less democratic states.
Regulated is probably worse than some anarchistic who-knows-by-whom software, but FOSS and auditable these days, tbh. Especially as everyone's audit capabilities grow day by day with AI. It's kind of good at grinding tons of code.
A heavily regulated entity with all licenses in the world might be more hostile toward users than some niche project.
> I don't see how regulated entity is better in any way than individual.
I feel you. Regulatory bodies have definitely fallen short in many cases, and we've seen concerning proposals from governments that threaten digital privacy and freedom. "Who watches the watchmen" seems incredibly apt nowadays.
However, I feel there's a fundamental difference between imperfect accountability and no accountability at all. With a legal entity governed by stated policies, users have:
1. Transparency about who makes decisions and how
2. Clear terms that create binding commitments
3. Legal mechanisms for recourse if those commitments are violated
4. A persistent entity that can't simply disappear overnight
Perfect? Not really. The ICO in the UK, for example, hasn't been amazing at enforcing data protection. But the existence of these frameworks means that accountability is at least possible - there are levers that can be pulled if someone can be bothered to.
In contrast, with software maintained by anonymous or loosely affiliated individuals, there's no structural accountability whatsoever. If privacy promises are broken, users have no recourse beyond abandoning the software.
FOSS and auditability are valuable safeguards, sure, but they primarily protect against unintentional privacy violations that might be discovered in code reviews. They don't address the human element of intentional policy changes or decisions about data collection.
do they still make ot worthwhile for developers? are any on the payroll still?
i think the community should mobilize to sign up for adopting A single fork* as the official fork and completely drop mozilla from existence.
* only criteria should be the fork that is most convenient for all the other forks to just point to instead of mozilla and continue to ship with their patches. and that one fork should have the minimum resources to respond to security disclosures in place of mozilla, nothing else as a requirement.
More importantly that fork should be what other forks base off of. Anyone can put a skin on a browser, but someone needs to do the engine. If every fork who wants an engine improvement goes to the one place there is some mass behind making the fork real, and the other forks can still to their skin if they think it useful. That one fork also means that when mozilla comes out with a new version there are enough hands to merge (at least until Mozilla diverges too far from the fork)
>it seems daft to me when others suggest using forks with no well-established governance of their own
Yes, it may be that we are jumping from the frying pan into the fire. On the bright-side this opens up an opportunity for a company, or a suite of companies, to fund an alternative browser. Such an entity might have Signal at its lead, or similar, who's mission is solely to "tighten up" the software stack on which it runs.
> I should point out, it seems daft to me when others suggest using forks with no well-established governance of their own, essentially shifting trust from an organisation at least answerable to certain regulations, to individuals with no proper framework or guidelines
Individuals that care about these things have a far better track record than any business with employees, bills to pay, and investors.
Until that individual tires of the work, and then stops working on it completely or sells it to someone with less scruples or the project gets hijacked by malicious actor.
> I should point out, it seems daft to me when others suggest using forks with no well-established governance of their own, essentially shifting trust from an organisation at least answerable to certain regulations, to individuals with no proper framework or guidelines.
That just shows that trust in Mozilla has sunk below "random stranger" levels. IMO that shift is entirely deserved.
The context to keep in mind here is that Mozilla purchased an ad company back in June. They spent money on it, and they will move to earn a return on investment.
Absent that context this could just be another tone deaf policy choice that gets rolled back when there's enough heat, but with that context in mind it's far more likely to be them laying the legal foundation to incorporate Anonym's targeted advertising into Firefox.
From the Register article about the acquisition:
> Arielle Garcia, director of intelligence for ad watchdog Check My Ads, told The Register in an email that she's generally skeptical of claims about privacy-preserving ad technology.
> "For example, how do Anonym’s audience capabilities, like their lookalike modeling, jibe with what Mozilla considers to be 'exploitative models of data extraction?' The data that is 'securely shared' by platforms and advertisers to enable ad targeting and measurement have to come from somewhere – and there’s more to privacy than not leaking user IDs."
This is not the first time Mozilla bought an ad company, last time it was Qlikz. And last time it cost them most of their German users. Wonder how many users they will lose this time.
1. Is github the best place to report bugs / issues for Waterfox?
2. When (not in your lifetime obviously) Waterfox is broken, what canaries do you have deployed that we can archive now, like Mozilla's tell here?
3. What keeps waterfox afloat? Where/how do you accept funds?
4. How do I find a sync alternative or provide my own? Such that, I'm not reliant on Mozilla sync/backend?
... If none exists, how much would it cost for you to embed one? Would you accept a serious bounty for it assuming the focus is self hosted / no Waterfox backend services?
> When (not in your lifetime obviously) Waterfox is broken, what canaries do you have deployed that we can archive now, like Mozilla's tell here?
This is so melodramatic. It’s a set of patch files applied to the Firefox source tree. If an evil maintainer hatches a maniacal plan to collect user statistics and deletes the patch that removes telemetry or whatever, you can just `git revert`.
To Mozilla: if your intentions are indeed good as you claim in your post[1], then update the ToS accordingly.
Chrome is removing µBlock origin, I and probably a lot of other users saw this as a good moment to promote Firefox to our relatives, you are missing a chance and alienating your user base here.
Absolutely agree. The blog post is claiming the opposite to what their ToS is granting - but one is fluff (that will be forgotten soon) while the other is legally binding. I cannot imagine applications like browsers that would require such an unrestricted license for user input just to do its service. That clearly indicates some "other" future motive that is underlined by the notion to remove the FAQ entry and other past actions towards an advertising future at Mozilla.
Am looking forward to explore some of the alternatives. And no, I don't want a just a correcting/updating/informing follow-up blog post of how we the users got it all wrong.
In fact, the current UPDATE makes it worse:
"UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice."
vs. the ToS:
"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."
No - you don't need a license for my input. Just pass the butter, it's not your job to "use that information" in any way, form or shape. How did you survive 26 years without any license to our input? What did legally change that would require that license? No one asked you to: "We use data to make Firefox functional and sustainable, improve your experience, and keep you safe." (from the blog). What does that even mean? If you have specific use-cases in mind state them clearly, instead of this overreaching general license, that may or may not be misused now or in future. As of this ToS you may very sell my data to AI companies to "help me navigate the internet" which is not even part of the Privacy Notice protection.
Reinstatement your privacy guarantees in the ToS and be transparent about explicit use-cases.
The blog does come from company officials and so you can show it to a judge and state "this is how you should interpret their ToS". It will be harder than if the ToS was clear, but the judge on seeing the ToS and blog differ is likely to come down hard to Mozilla for creating this situation. But you also need a good (expensive) lawyer to pull this off.
> How did you survive 26 years without any license to our input?
Might be a case of covering their asses in the context of services they provide for search suggestions etc. Those are not mere programs users run on their own devices, and they rather make use of services run by Mozilla, which probably leads to their lawyers seeing the need for legally covering Mozilla ass.
A less charitable interpretation is that they actually want to introduce terms for using the software itself, in a way that conflicts with the no-nonsense "no restrictions on use" approach of open source, and thus ignoring open source principles in preference for covering their asses against hypothetical risks, while somehow still trying to look like open source.
In any case I agree the blog post or the update don't make anything better. I don't think the post says anything substantial about the terms of use or their introduction. It doesn't, in concrete terms, clarify anything about the seeming conflict between the introduction of terms of use and the commonly accepted definition of open source (which includes no restrictions on use). The post rather seems like a classic case of trying to make things better with nice-sounding words rather than owning up and actually clarifying any ambiguity.
Based on this, Firefox has a 2.54% market share of browsers worldwide, so if their goal here is to shoot themselves in the foot and get that number under 2%, mission accomplished.
Firefox is still the lesser of two evils when compared to Chrome with all of its telemetry turned on. And at least it supports a proper implementation of uBlock origin, which Google just broke in Chrome.
> Finally, you are in control. We’ve set responsible defaults that you can review during onboarding or adjust in your settings at any time: These simple, yet powerful tools let you manage your data the way you want.
"simple yet powerful tools" (derogatory) is how i would describe the windows popup that gives you the choice between setting up a microsoft account now or being nagged about it later
An interesting implication of this is that it would point to Firefox being considered a service from Mozilla (hence why they need a license to facilitate your use of the program).
If we now look at their "Acceptable Use Policy", we can find this:
> You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to [...] Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence, [...]
So one could interpret this all to say that you're not allowed to view or download porn via Firefox. Additionally, "graphic depictions of violence" could extend to things like the sort of bodycam footage and reporting from war zones frequently seen in news reports.
Yeah, it's annoying, but also nothing particularly new I believe. There seem to be two types of garbage links added by default:
1. "Sponsored shortcuts" that can be "easily" turned off in `about:preferences#home`
2. I guess "non-sponsored" shortcuts? I believe they pointed to Facebook, eBay, and something else (Pinterest maybe). Those have to be removed/"blocked" individually. I think they end up in `browser.newtabpage.blocked` after doing so.
I don't like that this is a thing I have to do whenever I set up a new Firefox install. It's not often, to be fair, but it still sucks nonetheless.
I don't read it the way you say. The more restrictive terms are for use of services. If you use firefox, you have to agree not to use the Mozilla services for the prohibited categories, but there are many uses of the browser that are not using Mozilla services.
If you accessed graphic content using the browser, you are not violating the terms unless you put that content up on a mozilla service somewhere. The obvious issue would be some type of bookmark sync. If you bookmarked a graphic url you might violate the terms when it syncs to mozilla, but even then it would be hard to argue that you are granting access to your future self, so unless you used a bookmark sharing service provided by mozilla, I would say its a gray area. So disable bookmark sync. I typically disable all external services in my browser so this would not be relevant.
But my point is that even though you have to agree to the use policy when downloading the browser, it doesn't mean it governs all use of the browser.
> I don't think their AUP considers the browser software a service.
One would think so, right? But why does Mozilla want me to "license" to them everything I "upload or input [...] through Firefox"[1]. Where do the "facilitated services" start and where do they end? It sure would be nice if they could draw that distinction, without it, the cautious interpretation would be that that everything is a facilitated service.
> I don't think their AUP considers the browser software a service.
It is not just about their services! They clarify it by writing: "Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations." Src.: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
>UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.
From their blog post[1]. Smells like bullshit to me. You haven't had this license for the last 30 years and I've had no trouble browsing. What's changed that you suddenly need it?
There's a hidden motive, or utter incompetence in managing this side of the licensing and communication (either by beginners "better cover you ass" MBA or lawyers thinking, which could mean it's the result of some consulting firm operation).
Either way, the sudden change without proper communication is suspicious.
If you haven't already configured "Firefox Data Collection and Use" and "Website Advertising Preferences" to not share data you should do so immediately.
What basic functionality are they talking about? Do they list it anywhere? Or is "basic functionality" the new "security reasons" for justifying every stupid rule or policy.
Mere speculations: they might have been contemplating the integration of their Orbit add-on into the browser. For that, they might need some extra legal fluffs.
I have no idea what I am talking about but could it be related to future AI related features that process user data locally and/or on their servers? At least that would make some sense to me.
They're covering their asses for something. That could also just mean that the old license/terms/privacy policy doesn't actually cover the data processing they're already doing (i.e. the opt-out telemetry, the account sync mechanism, etc.). If they publicly admit that their previous agreements didn't provide enough legal cover to allow their basic data processing, the class action lawsuit vultures would be all over them.
That lawyers are spooked. That's all there is. California changed the rules and that made every lawyer in an organization that can't have a portrayed legal battle with the state very nervous. Nothing in the language says that they can do things that they couldn't do before.
> Mozilla can suspend or end anyone’s access to Firefox at any time for any reason, including if Mozilla decides not to offer Firefox anymore.
On what planet is that free, open source?
Can you imagine: "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) can suspend anyone's access to GNU Emacs at any time for any reason, including if the FSF decides not to offer GNU Emacs any more".
If that was the intention, the correct term would have been "Mozilla's services". The very first sentence of that document defines Firefox: "Firefox is free and open source web browser software".
Yes, it seems like Mozilla has long had a problem of marketing getting in the way of communication. This keeps happening over and over gain. They make changes for marketing reasons, and then people are confused when they make policy changes because they've solidified their naming so much in the pursuit of brand recognition that their audience (rightly) is confused about what they're actually saying when they use that brand name to refer to a singular component of their offerings.
What’s wrong with transparency for advertisements? If you take offense to the “boosting” of news sites, I see the point but now we have Elon arbitrarily boosting his own content on X.
Not sure how you end up solving that issue other than perhaps a more transparent system like the original Birdwatch.
> If we decide to suspend or end your access, we will try to notify you at the email address associated with your account or the next time you attempt to access your account
It seems like this is not about the browser itself, but rather about Firefox accounts. The wording is pretty ambiguous, though.
They’re referring to the binary release, in this case. You can compile Firefox from source at any time (but if you distribute it, you’re not allowed to call it Firefox due to trademark restrictions)
Open source does technically allow you to put restrictions on binary releases, as long as users can do whatever they want with the source code and compile it from scratch.
It really goes against the spirit of open source though.
This likely refers to Firefox-the-product, not Firefox-the-open-source-project since there's no functional way to revoke your access to a mercurial checkout on your PC.
It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with revocation or termination clauses, either. I recall seeing ones that basically say "If you file a patent suit around this open software, your rights to use it are gone".
> It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with revocation or termination clauses, either. I recall seeing ones that basically say "If you file a patent suit around this open software, your rights to use it are gone".
Trying to take back the license based on use of the software, however, would make it not "open source", since that would be use restriction.
- "It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with revocation or termination clauses,"
Yes, but aside from jokes[0] it's unprecedented for an OSS license to attempt to restrain the purposes for which end-users use software. That's incompatible with the definition of free software ("free", as in "freedom").
- "Before that, the JSLint license[4] was a derivative of the MIT License.[5] The sole modification was the addition of the line "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."
- "According to the Free Software Foundation, this previous clause made the original license non-free."
The problem I have with these kinds of hot-takes is that they often don't tell the full story, and it's seemingly for the purpose of generating rage. For some inexplicable reason, this guy truncates the paragraph from the Terms of Use, repackaging the information without a key part of the final sentence: "....to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
I'm not saying that this definitely makes a material difference, but it certainly changes the framing of it. The way he has framed it makes it sound like Mozilla has given itself carte blanche to do what it wants -- but the little caveat at the end of the sentence really does change the narrative a little bit. So why cut off a sentence half-way through it -- is it maybe to make it sound worse? For that reason alone, I can't take this guy seriously.
I generally wait before jumping on the outrage-train for this reason, but two things stand out:
- Mozilla explicitly deleting "we don't sell your data" statements across their documentation
- Following up to criticism that the statement is vague, bullshitty and open to interpretation with statements that are even more vague, bullshitty and open to interpretation.
By now, they've had time to notice that something is not right and that they need to make a clear statement, and they haven't taken the opportunity.
They didn't delete it. Go to the github diff they reference and check. It's still there. They just removed it from one of the JSON files but people here aren't actually checking facts, they're just jumping on the hate train.
Yes and this phrasing is used in many other products, like credit cards. Additionally, the fact that the phrasing can be interpreted as such means that it will be interpreted as such and so makes Mozilla's new Terms unacceptable to anyone who values their privacy or data.
So, what do you read the end of that sentence mean? Because the way I read it is worse:
> to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
I don't read that as a caveat, so I'm assuming it means something different to you. To reword slightly and hopefully show how that sentence is coming across to me:
> As you have indicated by using Firefox you have given us the right to...
Im fully on board that people should try to include or link as much of a story they can so that I can form my own opinion. There are way too many times that I read a reasonable take, then you read the original source, only to find that the reasonable take is completely off base.
In this case I don't have the reaction, but I will agree that in general its a good idea to include more rather than less.
The redacted part here looks to be a GDPR boilerplate for consent. GDRP require consent to be specific. In order to do so the lawyers of Mozilla seems to have used industry standard phrasing to comply with the law, such as "to help you navigate, enhance experience, and interact with {INSERT SERVICE/PRODUCT}".
For those with some interest in legal history, there is similar stories in other boilerplate texts that consumer get exposed to. I always find the background to the WARRANTY DISCLAIMER text to have a fairly funny historical background that is a few centuries old legal case regarding a mill axle. The current form we see now was created as the first example in a list from US regulation guidelines (which reference the mill axle case). A company can use any other form given in that guideline, but as it happens, everyone just jumped on the first example, slapped it onto stuff and shipped it. Lawyers know it is valid for US trade regulation and that was apparently enough for the rest of the world.
> "....to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
We weren't born yesterday, and companies pull this shit all the time. This sentence is meaningless. You could use this sentence to justify literally any behaviour.
One _easy_ way to read this change:
> "... to help you interact with online content"
Selling your data to have more relevant ads could easily be justified as helping you interact with online content
> as you indicate with your use of Firefox.
Using firefox indicates that you want us to do this.
Or,
we made it an opt-out that is quietly rolled out in an update.
Correct, that quote is very typical corporate language that includes selling your data to advertising companies to ""help users discover new experiences which align with their interests"" or some other weasel speak. People acting like that language meaningfully changes the meaning are either painfully naive or think the rest of us are.
If it's simply a matter of principle, quoting the full section with no abridgements because we're larping like we're in a court room or something, whatever. But get real, that section doesn't make Mozilla look any better.
No. We are talking about legality. Quote the whole bloody thing. If you don’t get to say “I picked out the bit I like” in court, then you don’t get to do it here. If you’re so right, then it’s not worth taking out in the first place.
are you replying to wrong post? the linked tweet says:
> Mozilla has just deleted the following:
> “Does Firefox sell your personal data?”
> “Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise. "
That tweet is 100% correct, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43209001 for two links, all references to "not selling personal data" are gone. There is no missing context or truncation here, and this says nothing about terms-of-use (except commit message but that's immaterial)
But Mozilla said what they will do. They also had very expensive rebranding to support it! They are now activist AI company that wants to fight disinformation, censor people and sell ads.
Readit News
An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612 - Feb 2025 (119 comments)
Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.
Acceptable Use Policy links to https://www.mozilla.org/about/legal/acceptable-use/ which says "You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[...]Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence"
It's against the Terms of Use to use Firefox to... watch porn?
Either their legal team made a mistake, in which case they should correct it and issue an apology ASAP, or they really do intend to own you, in which case I recommend switching to an alternative browser which is only a browser, like Dillo, Ladybird, or Netsurf.
Firefox isn't a Mozilla service. The Mozilla services are things like account sync, or the review tool they use.
Fine by me since I don't use a Mozilla account, but sounds to me like I shouldn't get a Mozilla account either
It's pretty odd if you aren't allowed to use their VPN to watch or share porn
- send unsolicited communications (for example cold emailing an employer about a job) - Deceive or mislead (for example inviting your brother over for a surprise party under false pretenses) - Purchase legal controlled products (for example sending the pharmacy a refill for your Xanax) - Collect email addresses without permission (for example putting together a list of emails to contact public officials)
The fact that Firefox isn't a "Mozilla Service" seems irrelevant.
They might clarify that in the agreement. I doubt many people are intimately familiar with Mozilla, Firefox, 'services', etc. to distinguish. I am and I didn't think of it in a brief reading (which is all I have time for).
The entire AUP is prefixed “You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to:”. There’s nothing in the AUP that doesn’t refer to “Mozilla’s services.” When the Firefox TOS explicitly includes this AUP, how could it make sense unless they think of Firefox as one of their services?
At the risk of restating the gp’s quote:
> Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.
> Vous ne pouvez pas utiliser les services et produits de Mozilla dans les buts suivants :
I would say porn is probably in the top 3 if not number 1 use for VPNs
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6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1hqqpbt/newest_ver...
Some of the things that are happening are just from the threat of “something bad might come down from the new administration”. It’s so ridiculous.
So, on one end, state governments are trying to strongarm NSFW services by imposing draconian requirements that ask users to submit their private data to some random opaque 'benevolent' third party business - and on the other, payment processors are using their legal right to refuse whatever transaction for any reason so they can starve them of income.
It's by far not the first time this has happened but it's kinda surreal to be alive for one.
EDIT: I'm not sure why porn is particularly interesting here when most internet activity seems to be potentially against terms of service.
Dead Comment
I don't think it is a mistake but more the translation of a vision and strategy that took hundreds of meetings to be laid down very precisely.
I have nothing to back what I am gonna say but I am wondering if their strategy might be to truly become the default browser of governments who are uncomfortable having Chrome or Edge as the default browser. Especially since now they get augmented by a lot of AI.
Firefox has it largest market share in Europe and Germany it seems and with the concerns with are hearing over there about Big tech I wouldn't be surprised at some point some govs try to make their workstations Firefox only.
Also some governments are trying hard to restrict access to porn, violence and social media for children but we know it is almost impossible to do it at the network level. So they might try at the browser level with the help of Mozilla and some "sanctioned Internet AI safety" inside the browser?
I really don't know but think about it, Mozilla is a dead man walking with it's 2% market share and huge cost of maintaining one of the most complex piece of software. They have to do something about it.
What just tipped me off is reading on Wikipedia [0]:
> On February 8, 2024, Mozilla announced that Baker would be stepping down as CEO to "focus on AI and internet safety"[2] as chair of the Mozilla Foundation.
- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...
So the text of the policy itself limits its scope to Mozilla Services.
But the purpose of that section is unclear to me. If it just means you have to comply with that policy when using features that use Mozilla services, why is that section necessary, since the license for the services should already apply.
If it is trying to mean that all the terms for Mozilla services also applies to any use of Firefox... that is really clumisily written, and also just generally terrible.
I think its a good argument for using a Firefox fork.
So either they're saying your use of Firefox, regardless of whether you want to use Mozilla services, must also follow the same acceptable use policy that your use of their services would, or it's a massively ambiguous way of saying your use of Firefox in combination with actual Mozilla services must comply with the policy.
If it's the former, their terms of use would be in conflict with the commonly understood definition of open source and free software licensing. If it's the latter, it's just poor legalese that fails to make its intent clear. (Interestingly, the Mozilla Public License does not seem to explicitly say that there are no restrictions regarding the use of the software for any particular purpose, although that is a commonly accepted part of the definition of free software and open source.)
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250228155328/https://www.mozil...
[2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/
Did not know any of those alternatives thanks for sharing.
After a quick online search, I see they could work for casual browsing and it's great that they don't rely on Chromium
But do you think these can be a full browser replacement without extension ecosystems like ublock origin et al.?
> But do you think these can be a full browser replacement without extension ecosystems like ublock origin et al.?
I'm now actually trying to use qutebrowser as a replacement... it's not easy due to the lack of extensions, but mitigating factors are:
1. it has integrated adblock (though no cosmetic filtering) 2. there are userscripts to integrate with the Bitwarden CLI or a running instance of KeepassXC.
https://kagi.com/orion
It's been working fine for me anyway.
Ladybird would be a better choice, but it's not even fully baked yet. Coming sometime in 2026, supposedly.
I'd recommend the Brave browser for people concerned about recent bad news from Mozilla.
I maintain it.
> They even lost control of the dillo.org domain a long time ago
New website is at: https://dillo-browser.github.io/
See https://dillo-browser.github.io/dillo.org.html and maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFJp8JDg8Yg or https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4100-resu...
> ... which pretty much spells amateur hour
?
These seem like a more direct migration path for someone wanting to move off of Firefox.
So i guess it's more a 'we at Mozilla don't want any trouble' thing.
May be I am way too cynical than average people. What is being stated here is actually inline of what they think is right. They think watching Porn is wrong. Which is why you shouldn't use Firefox to watch porn, or anything else they deemed wrong.
And that is speaking from someone who joined the Firefox 1.0 New York Times Ad.
I guess we will all have to do it again. This time for Ladybird.
Deleted Comment
Gives them an out to claim it's already not permitted on their platform and that they're not enabling crime in these states.
Mozilla's ToS applies for Firefox's use, and this is literally written by Mozilla themselves:
“Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy”
There's no distinction between the browser and Mozilla's online services here.
---
And even if it were referring only to features such as “profile syncing” (and it doesn't refer only to that), does this mean that people can't have bookmarks to porn? And why would Mozilla care about how people use profile syncing at all? I thought it was e2e encrypted.
It's easy to laugh and dismiss that. But what if you're a journalist covering war? You're going to have plenty of bookmarks of graphic violence, and therefore run afoul of this license.
But they clearly want to collect and sell that data
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
When Mitchell Baker took the reins, Mozilla became rather more heavy-handed towards us - the irony being that Waterfox was once proudly displayed on the Mozilla website under their "Powered By" banner.
I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces, but they've made some peculiar decisions as of late.
On one hand, they're finally implementing features users have been clamouring for ages (tab groups, vertical tabs and the likes) - on the other, rather odd policy choices.
I should point out, it seems daft to me when others suggest using forks with no well-established governance of their own, essentially shifting trust from an organisation at least answerable to certain regulations, to individuals with no proper framework or guidelines.
I've done my best with Waterfox over the years to have it represented by a proper legal entity with policies to follow; so if anyone is interested take a look.
Edit: FWIW I've written some more thoughts on it here: https://www.waterfox.net/blog/a-comment-on-mozilla-changes/
Two possible outcomes:
1. No one cares. No one pays for it. Nothing changes and nobody loses anything.
2. Enough people pay for it to keep the product healthy and the user-centric promise alive. The Internet is saved.
So why isn't anyone trying to replace Mozilla yet, with a more sane business model than living on the back of Google's fear of antitrust investigation? What's the worse that can happen?
Just sell a bonafide paid version alongside the free one, don't just rely on donations. There is a massive difference between offering a paid product and begging passers-by to spare some change.
Because writing manifestos is easy and making a browser is proper hard work ?
When this topic has been discussed on Hacker News in the past, it has also been pointed out that developing a browser with feature parity to Firefox or Chrome would be prohibitively expensive.
It's currently macOS and iPad/iPhone only, but a Linux version is being worked on. I don't know their plans for a Windows version.
There's also Ladybird and several Webkit wrappers.
Question is: how many people would jump ship, and then how much money would that represent to pay devs.
Dead Comment
That makes it a bit easier to trust, but it does run into the issue that it stops working if Mozilla hits a certain level of untrustworthiness.
"I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces"
I would also love to face $7B existential wobbles.
The wobble seems to somewhat artificial. I'm having trouble believing Firefox could ever not be able to afford to continue browser development — there are way too many interests at stake. Google alone would have no choice but to bail Firefox out because Chrome can't be the only browser without being regulated to hell and back.
For it to be self-imposed there needs to be an comparable amount of money ready to spring forth if Google ever pulled out that Mozilla is somehow keeping a lid on.
We repeatedly see attacks on freedom and privacy by the people who are supposed to protect them, those so-called "regulators": chatcontrol, recent UK backdoor wishes, repeated French proposals to enforce DRM even on opensource. And I wouldn't even google Russia, China, or other less democratic states.
Regulated is probably worse than some anarchistic who-knows-by-whom software, but FOSS and auditable these days, tbh. Especially as everyone's audit capabilities grow day by day with AI. It's kind of good at grinding tons of code.
A heavily regulated entity with all licenses in the world might be more hostile toward users than some niche project.
I feel you. Regulatory bodies have definitely fallen short in many cases, and we've seen concerning proposals from governments that threaten digital privacy and freedom. "Who watches the watchmen" seems incredibly apt nowadays.
However, I feel there's a fundamental difference between imperfect accountability and no accountability at all. With a legal entity governed by stated policies, users have:
1. Transparency about who makes decisions and how
2. Clear terms that create binding commitments
3. Legal mechanisms for recourse if those commitments are violated
4. A persistent entity that can't simply disappear overnight
Perfect? Not really. The ICO in the UK, for example, hasn't been amazing at enforcing data protection. But the existence of these frameworks means that accountability is at least possible - there are levers that can be pulled if someone can be bothered to.
In contrast, with software maintained by anonymous or loosely affiliated individuals, there's no structural accountability whatsoever. If privacy promises are broken, users have no recourse beyond abandoning the software.
FOSS and auditability are valuable safeguards, sure, but they primarily protect against unintentional privacy violations that might be discovered in code reviews. They don't address the human element of intentional policy changes or decisions about data collection.
do they still make ot worthwhile for developers? are any on the payroll still?
i think the community should mobilize to sign up for adopting A single fork* as the official fork and completely drop mozilla from existence.
* only criteria should be the fork that is most convenient for all the other forks to just point to instead of mozilla and continue to ship with their patches. and that one fork should have the minimum resources to respond to security disclosures in place of mozilla, nothing else as a requirement.
Yes, it may be that we are jumping from the frying pan into the fire. On the bright-side this opens up an opportunity for a company, or a suite of companies, to fund an alternative browser. Such an entity might have Signal at its lead, or similar, who's mission is solely to "tighten up" the software stack on which it runs.
Truly independent
No code from other browsers. We're building a new engine, based on web standards.
Singular focus
We are focused on one thing: the web browser.
No monetization
No "default search deals", crypto tokens, or other forms of user monetization, ever.
https://ladybird.org/
Individuals that care about these things have a far better track record than any business with employees, bills to pay, and investors.
That just shows that trust in Mozilla has sunk below "random stranger" levels. IMO that shift is entirely deserved.
Deleted Comment
The context to keep in mind here is that Mozilla purchased an ad company back in June. They spent money on it, and they will move to earn a return on investment.
Absent that context this could just be another tone deaf policy choice that gets rolled back when there's enough heat, but with that context in mind it's far more likely to be them laying the legal foundation to incorporate Anonym's targeted advertising into Firefox.
From the Register article about the acquisition:
> Arielle Garcia, director of intelligence for ad watchdog Check My Ads, told The Register in an email that she's generally skeptical of claims about privacy-preserving ad technology.
> "For example, how do Anonym’s audience capabilities, like their lookalike modeling, jibe with what Mozilla considers to be 'exploitative models of data extraction?' The data that is 'securely shared' by platforms and advertisers to enable ad targeting and measurement have to come from somewhere – and there’s more to privacy than not leaking user IDs."
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/mozilla_buys_anonym_b...
2. When (not in your lifetime obviously) Waterfox is broken, what canaries do you have deployed that we can archive now, like Mozilla's tell here?
3. What keeps waterfox afloat? Where/how do you accept funds?
4. How do I find a sync alternative or provide my own? Such that, I'm not reliant on Mozilla sync/backend? ... If none exists, how much would it cost for you to embed one? Would you accept a serious bounty for it assuming the focus is self hosted / no Waterfox backend services?
This is so melodramatic. It’s a set of patch files applied to the Firefox source tree. If an evil maintainer hatches a maniacal plan to collect user statistics and deletes the patch that removes telemetry or whatever, you can just `git revert`.
Chrome is removing µBlock origin, I and probably a lot of other users saw this as a good moment to promote Firefox to our relatives, you are missing a chance and alienating your user base here.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi...
Am looking forward to explore some of the alternatives. And no, I don't want a just a correcting/updating/informing follow-up blog post of how we the users got it all wrong. In fact, the current UPDATE makes it worse:
"UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice."
vs. the ToS:
"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."
No - you don't need a license for my input. Just pass the butter, it's not your job to "use that information" in any way, form or shape. How did you survive 26 years without any license to our input? What did legally change that would require that license? No one asked you to: "We use data to make Firefox functional and sustainable, improve your experience, and keep you safe." (from the blog). What does that even mean? If you have specific use-cases in mind state them clearly, instead of this overreaching general license, that may or may not be misused now or in future. As of this ToS you may very sell my data to AI companies to "help me navigate the internet" which is not even part of the Privacy Notice protection.
Reinstatement your privacy guarantees in the ToS and be transparent about explicit use-cases.
Meanwhile, so long, and thanks for all the fish.
> That clearly indicates some "other" future motive
It's training data, isn't it?
(It's always training data).
Might be a case of covering their asses in the context of services they provide for search suggestions etc. Those are not mere programs users run on their own devices, and they rather make use of services run by Mozilla, which probably leads to their lawyers seeing the need for legally covering Mozilla ass.
A less charitable interpretation is that they actually want to introduce terms for using the software itself, in a way that conflicts with the no-nonsense "no restrictions on use" approach of open source, and thus ignoring open source principles in preference for covering their asses against hypothetical risks, while somehow still trying to look like open source.
In any case I agree the blog post or the update don't make anything better. I don't think the post says anything substantial about the terms of use or their introduction. It doesn't, in concrete terms, clarify anything about the seeming conflict between the introduction of terms of use and the commonly accepted definition of open source (which includes no restrictions on use). The post rather seems like a classic case of trying to make things better with nice-sounding words rather than owning up and actually clarifying any ambiguity.
Firefox is still the lesser of two evils when compared to Chrome with all of its telemetry turned on. And at least it supports a proper implementation of uBlock origin, which Google just broke in Chrome.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
previous discussion from mid 2023 on low firefox market share: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36759162
> Monthly Active Users (MAU) measures the number of Firefox Desktop clients active in the past 28 days.
> February 10, 2025: 163,203,913 clients
> February 17, 2025: 163,742,671 clients
"simple yet powerful tools" (derogatory) is how i would describe the windows popup that gives you the choice between setting up a microsoft account now or being nagged about it later
Deleted Comment
If we now look at their "Acceptable Use Policy", we can find this:
> You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to [...] Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence, [...]
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/
And to corroborate the applicability of the Acceptable Use Policy to the Firefox browser:
> Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, [...]
("Acceptable Use Policy" is hyperlinked to the aforementioned page)
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
So one could interpret this all to say that you're not allowed to view or download porn via Firefox. Additionally, "graphic depictions of violence" could extend to things like the sort of bodycam footage and reporting from war zones frequently seen in news reports.
My Firefox install lately added links to what could be considered not so nice sites for grandmas like amazon.com and hotels.com to the start screen.
It is quite clear they see it as their program not mine program.
I dunno for how long I will stick to using the least worst alternative. To go for custom builds would be giving up on Mozilla.
edit: Toned down language
Since when is Amazon a scam site?
I don't like em' either, but hyperbole doesn't help.
For what it's worth, it can be removed in about 4 seconds.
1. "Sponsored shortcuts" that can be "easily" turned off in `about:preferences#home`
2. I guess "non-sponsored" shortcuts? I believe they pointed to Facebook, eBay, and something else (Pinterest maybe). Those have to be removed/"blocked" individually. I think they end up in `browser.newtabpage.blocked` after doing so.
I don't like that this is a thing I have to do whenever I set up a new Firefox install. It's not often, to be fair, but it still sucks nonetheless.
No civil disobedience. Bad Mozilla! Bad, bad Mozilla!
If you accessed graphic content using the browser, you are not violating the terms unless you put that content up on a mozilla service somewhere. The obvious issue would be some type of bookmark sync. If you bookmarked a graphic url you might violate the terms when it syncs to mozilla, but even then it would be hard to argue that you are granting access to your future self, so unless you used a bookmark sharing service provided by mozilla, I would say its a gray area. So disable bookmark sync. I typically disable all external services in my browser so this would not be relevant.
But my point is that even though you have to agree to the use policy when downloading the browser, it doesn't mean it governs all use of the browser.
IANAL
I don't think their AUP considers the browser software a service.
One would think so, right? But why does Mozilla want me to "license" to them everything I "upload or input [...] through Firefox"[1]. Where do the "facilitated services" start and where do they end? It sure would be nice if they could draw that distinction, without it, the cautious interpretation would be that that everything is a facilitated service.
[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
It is not just about their services! They clarify it by writing: "Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations." Src.: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
From their blog post[1]. Smells like bullshit to me. You haven't had this license for the last 30 years and I've had no trouble browsing. What's changed that you suddenly need it?
[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-terms-o...
There's a hidden motive, or utter incompetence in managing this side of the licensing and communication (either by beginners "better cover you ass" MBA or lawyers thinking, which could mean it's the result of some consulting firm operation).
Either way, the sudden change without proper communication is suspicious.
My suspicion is that this is somehow related to Mozilla Anonym: https://www.anonymco.com/
If you haven't already configured "Firefox Data Collection and Use" and "Website Advertising Preferences" to not share data you should do so immediately.
Ha! As if slowing down browsing and your computer would have a good result.
Something something malice something incompetence.
That lawyers are spooked. That's all there is. California changed the rules and that made every lawyer in an organization that can't have a portrayed legal battle with the state very nervous. Nothing in the language says that they can do things that they couldn't do before.
On what planet is that free, open source?
Can you imagine: "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) can suspend anyone's access to GNU Emacs at any time for any reason, including if the FSF decides not to offer GNU Emacs any more".
(I'm not happy with Mozilla's decision to name everything Firefox, it makes things like this confusing.)
Not sure how you end up solving that issue other than perhaps a more transparent system like the original Birdwatch.
> If we decide to suspend or end your access, we will try to notify you at the email address associated with your account or the next time you attempt to access your account
It seems like this is not about the browser itself, but rather about Firefox accounts. The wording is pretty ambiguous, though.
Open source does technically allow you to put restrictions on binary releases, as long as users can do whatever they want with the source code and compile it from scratch.
It really goes against the spirit of open source though.
It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with revocation or termination clauses, either. I recall seeing ones that basically say "If you file a patent suit around this open software, your rights to use it are gone".
Trying to take back the license based on use of the software, however, would make it not "open source", since that would be use restriction.
Yes, but aside from jokes[0] it's unprecedented for an OSS license to attempt to restrain the purposes for which end-users use software. That's incompatible with the definition of free software ("free", as in "freedom").
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSLint#License
- "Before that, the JSLint license[4] was a derivative of the MIT License.[5] The sole modification was the addition of the line "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."
- "According to the Free Software Foundation, this previous clause made the original license non-free."
Dead Comment
I'm not saying that this definitely makes a material difference, but it certainly changes the framing of it. The way he has framed it makes it sound like Mozilla has given itself carte blanche to do what it wants -- but the little caveat at the end of the sentence really does change the narrative a little bit. So why cut off a sentence half-way through it -- is it maybe to make it sound worse? For that reason alone, I can't take this guy seriously.
- Mozilla explicitly deleting "we don't sell your data" statements across their documentation
- Following up to criticism that the statement is vague, bullshitty and open to interpretation with statements that are even more vague, bullshitty and open to interpretation.
By now, they've had time to notice that something is not right and that they need to make a clear statement, and they haven't taken the opportunity.
See: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
It will still be interpreted to mean "...for any purpose" by Mozilla somehow.
> to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
I don't read that as a caveat, so I'm assuming it means something different to you. To reword slightly and hopefully show how that sentence is coming across to me:
> As you have indicated by using Firefox you have given us the right to...
In this case I don't have the reaction, but I will agree that in general its a good idea to include more rather than less.
The redacted part here looks to be a GDPR boilerplate for consent. GDRP require consent to be specific. In order to do so the lawyers of Mozilla seems to have used industry standard phrasing to comply with the law, such as "to help you navigate, enhance experience, and interact with {INSERT SERVICE/PRODUCT}".
For those with some interest in legal history, there is similar stories in other boilerplate texts that consumer get exposed to. I always find the background to the WARRANTY DISCLAIMER text to have a fairly funny historical background that is a few centuries old legal case regarding a mill axle. The current form we see now was created as the first example in a list from US regulation guidelines (which reference the mill axle case). A company can use any other form given in that guideline, but as it happens, everyone just jumped on the first example, slapped it onto stuff and shipped it. Lawyers know it is valid for US trade regulation and that was apparently enough for the rest of the world.
We weren't born yesterday, and companies pull this shit all the time. This sentence is meaningless. You could use this sentence to justify literally any behaviour.
One _easy_ way to read this change:
> "... to help you interact with online content"
Selling your data to have more relevant ads could easily be justified as helping you interact with online content
> as you indicate with your use of Firefox.
Using firefox indicates that you want us to do this.
Or,
we made it an opt-out that is quietly rolled out in an update.
If it's simply a matter of principle, quoting the full section with no abridgements because we're larping like we're in a court room or something, whatever. But get real, that section doesn't make Mozilla look any better.
> Mozilla has just deleted the following:
> “Does Firefox sell your personal data?”
> “Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise. "
That tweet is 100% correct, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43209001 for two links, all references to "not selling personal data" are gone. There is no missing context or truncation here, and this says nothing about terms-of-use (except commit message but that's immaterial)
For example, “we promise”.
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