Firefox Terms of Use
Effective February 25, 2025

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/

"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."

so, let it be clear:

I DO NOT CONSENT to Mozilla Corp. accessing or using ANYTHING i type in my browser, whether to serve ads, train LLMs or ANYTHING.

#FCK #Firefox

@jz Does Mozilla take their freedom to effectuate this for all versions and all current usage of Firefox? And did they backdoor Firefox to make it possible?

@jz Well, that saved me a monthly donation at least. They can fuck off!

@benjaoming this is apparently "Effective February 25, 2025" so they will likely argue that yes, it is effective now and on all versions.

Has the software being "updated to these new functionalities" (we cannot speak of "backdoor" if they announce in advance they gonna spy on us, can we?) yet?

I guess that you dont have more than i do the capacity to audit all of firefox' code, along all of its updates...? :/

We'll need to seriously mutualize (as in "fund" and "organize") resistance....

@jz I wonder about the GDPR aspect of this, too.

@jz @heiseonline @kuketz

Hello Heise, Mike, maybe this is worth an article to clarify and explain the details. Are they really willing to kill Firefox?

OK so here is a beginning of a plan:

1/ find the browser (or fork of firefox for now) that one can transition to;

2/ keep one instance of firefox for one and only one purpose:

- typing (and automating the typing) of what we truly think about mozilla, firefox and their overlord google ("F*CK OFF FIREFOX", etc. )

- granting them a "nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use" *that* sort of input coming from us, and only that!

- let them train LLM and "help us navigate" with that!

@jz 1/ => LibreWolf? :)

@scops LibreWolf is great (rather *seems* great as i haven't read its source code myself..) may be OK for now.

But do we have the collective resources (incl. funding) to audit all of ffox' code and updates?

Will we be able to detect and counter the upcoming waves of #enshitification, based on the new master plan of grabbing "licenses to use" everyone's data? How long before this becomes sisyphian? A viable strategy in the long-run? What alternatives?

Time for these difficult questions.. 🔥😡🦊

@jz hm, there isn't really an option besides a FF Fork in general... x.x Palemoon or Seamonkey are useable most of the time but much slower and not as modern x.x
NetSurf would be also an option for light browsing w/o Javascript for example

@jz et du coup que recommendez-vous ? Waterfox ?
Et est-ce que Tor Browser est impacté par le changement de politique de Firefox ?
Et j'imagine que ça va être pareil pr Thunderbird...

@jz I’m a bit confused about the license and the compatibility with this. I bet it works with the MPL and it’s not an additional restriction.

@jz
keep this project in mind.
https://ladybird.org/

@jz But what does this mean, exactly? They wrote a blog post to answer questions about what it means, which in no way actually explains what it means: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-terms-of-use/

@veronica well the explanation in the post actually makes it rather explicit! They double-down:

"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, "

1/ they "need" that license
2/ without it they cannot use the information typed in Firefox

-> They "need" to use the information typed in Firefox.

=(###

@jz Yes, but reading it feels like:

Firefox: We want your stuff.
Me: Ok? What stuff? I have lots of stuff.
Firefox: All your stuff!
Me: I see. What do you need it for?
Firefox: We must have your stuff!
Me: Yeah, but for example this thing is quite personal, why do you want that?
Firefox: All your stuff! Now!

@veronica exactly! :(((

It all reeks of "but everybody else is doing it" and "we MUST provide the *new* experience" and other marketing+management re-orientation bullshit....

@mozillaofficial Let me put this straight:

If you DO NOT remove that clause, apologize and fire the person(s) who initiated it in the first place,

I will dump ALL your products AND spend the rest of my life telling everyone i know (and then some) how you took Google's money to betray everything a free/libre and open Internet ever stood for.

How about that for a deal?

Oh, sorry, you don't even have a say, you hereby accepted those terms by using me...

@a That's what would look totally crazy from the eye of someone minding about licenses' terms, right?

On the other hand it reeks like Californian libertarian "ask for forgiveness later" predator mentality that presided to all abuses on people's personal data and their exploitation.

They claim it's "terms of use", so another contract, somehow, agreed upon by using the software itself.

They won't care and won't wait for it to be tried in a court of law...

We cannot wait either. 😡

@jz I guess this kind of clause has been in Chrome's terms of use for a looooong time? What alternative do we have?

@jz I see that text on [1], but higher up I see "These Terms only apply to the Executable Code version of Firefox, not the Firefox source code." So they're irrelevant to @debian @debian@lemmy.ml .

The #Debian wiki has a list - apparently dating back to 2018 - of about 20 parameters to prevent firefox automatic connections. The wiki won't update itself.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox

[2] https://wiki.debian.org/Firefox#Disabling_automatic_connections

@boud @debian@framapiaf.org @debian@lemmy.ml

Sure, but the intention is there. What when code will implement that vision/business-plan?

cf. https://mamot.fr/@jz/114076182958266263

Will we have the collective resources to detect and counter it? Is that the only bet we are placing now?

@jz @debian @debian@lemmy.ml Just to be clear: I'm not saying that the new terms are not a threat, just that in principle, the community (Debian+) can prepare for and respond to the threat.

There's a big thread at [3].

[3] https://infosec.exchange/@mttaggart/114071999359445580

@jz How can they just change terms and not notify users via browser? You can't just expect everyone to read their blog. They usually introduce such stuff with new version and put the note to the new version notification inside browser. This whole thing is fishy af.

@jz how can this be legal for EU citizens??

@gdupont one answer to that is "why would they care?" :/

(cf. Zuboff's meticulous analysis on the economic + legal strategies behind the "ask for forgiveness later" rather than "ask for permission" as the DNA of those silicon valley f*cks...)

@jz I don't have much experience nor expertise but it seems like a golden case for GDPR lawsuit...

@jz woah, @mozillaofficial bad move. Looking for a real privacy browser.

@jz
> And actually asking you to acknowledge it is an important step, so we’re making it a part of the standard product experience starting in early March for new users and later this year for existing ones.

from https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-terms-of-use/

so it's for new users now and older users later (ie we are not yet impacted but soon)

@jz c'est un logiciel libre... On peut enlever la fonction !

@jz cc @aral

@jz eehhh…. Das what?? 😳😳😳😳

@jz Wow.
@mozillaofficial @Mozilla could you clarify, please? Is this what Firefox has become for real?

@fabi1cazenave @jz @mozillaofficial @Mozilla They clarified with a blog post update saying "once again you're too stupid to understand us" (first sentence of the Update paragraph at https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/firefox-terms-of-use/)

@fabrice @jz @mozillaofficial @Mozilla
> Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example.

Well yes, that’s exactly the point : stay the fuck away from whatever I type in my web browser?!?

OMFG I can’t believe any Mozillian has validated such a thing.

@fabi1cazenave @fabrice @jz @mozillaofficial @Mozilla it totally reads "we want to be able to feed the planet burning stochastic parrots".

@highvoltage @jz Well. In favor of what?

@jz They added an update to the news page:

"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."

I read the whole privacy policy, and I don't see anything different than was there before. A couple of things I don't quite like that are opt-out, and the rest is opt-in.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a non corporate fork of Firefox that is well maintained, but I think this specific change is not inherently harmful, just a very bad attempt at rewriting the legal notice. If they actually introduce something in the source code that sends our data and is not explained in the privacy policy, we will know.

@jz Done! Goodbye #Firefox hello #LibreWolf! A big FU to #Mozilla which just removed the section in the FAQ promising to never sell my data as part of their change in privacy policy. Why would they remove that section if it was all just a misunderstanding? Sad to see the decline of a company I had great respect for -- it has reached the level where I can no longer use Firefox.

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e#diff-a24e74e4595fa85440a2f4e7e5dcfe68aba6e1e593aef05a2d35581a91423847L65

@jz JE N’ARRIVE PAS À Y CROIRE ! Quelle trahison ! Utilisateur depuis le tout début, même de Mozilla avant Firefox, je me sens extrêmement trahi. C’est vraiment très grave.

@jz Ok, back to @kagihq’s Orion browser it is then.

@jz I stand corrected. The changes where they deprecate all claims of "we don't sell your data" to be removed in the near future is a slap on the face of every Firefox user that believed in them. I don't know what data they intend to sell, but I don't care if it's just the sponsored things we all disable, you DON'T back track from a promise like that.

@OdyX @highvoltage

a plan could be:

- switch immediately to forks maintained by people determined to not let any of these planned enshitified anti-features live;

- learn to live with different views of the web (qutebrowser, links -g, etc.) for truly web-compliant sites;

- engage in a serious, critical discussion on collectively securing a future (that includes funding) for auditing and mid- /long-term developments such as a safe/reliable web-browser;

- watch/support https://servo.org/

@jz @scops Alternatives to Firefox: https://infolib.re/blog/navigateurs-web/

@jz I'm joining you in abandoning the Mozilla Foundation. I am trying out a Firefox fork, Waterfox, that is generally compatible with my needs. Do you know if Thunderbird is also involved in Mozilla's enshittification agenda?

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