General rule of thumb: Every time an organization updates their terms of service and/or privacy policy, it is never because they have your best interests at heart.

Specific thoughts on this latest Mozilla action (blog.mozilla.org/en/products/f…)

Setting aside the "worldwide license" bullshit, the privacy policy appears to have broadened both the classes of data Mozilla aims to collect, and the situations in which they collect them.

These are not the actions of an org that cares about your privacy.

in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

I'd specifically like to bring attention to the "To market our services." bases for data collection under which Mozilla now claim the right to gather, among other things, Unique identifiers and Browsing data - under which Consent is only considered if they have a legal obligation, and of course it's opt-out.
in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

There is also the incredibly broad "To comply with applicable laws, and identify and prevent harmful, unauthorized or illegal activity." in which Mozilla states they may gather "all data types" - among the defined types include: searches, browsing data (visited URLS), content and any other data.

In support of nebulously defined "identify and prevent harmful," and in response to law enforcement.

That "learn more about" link just goes to a list of definitions.

in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

This is far from the start of this journey, Mozilla have been working towards this point for many years.

A creeping corruption that I think has finally taken hold.

They themselves, say it best:

"Although we’ve historically relied on our open source license for Firefox and public commitments to you, we are building in a much different technology landscape today"

in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

I need a web browser, I need it to be open source. I need it to be secure and maintainable. I need it to work in my best interests.

Firefox is no longer that browser, I'll be working to move off of it. I don't think there is an obvious place to go, yet.

in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

For those asking what my current plan is:

I'm going to push forward on migrating my use of more complex web apps to a standalone equivs where available (e.g. mastodon / rss readers)

In the short term, probably tor browser to do more general browsing. I trust that team to be able to strip out most of the bad, and keep the rest generally locked down.

Long term: It's time to really commit to building something better.

in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

This is, what I tried to say about #Tor #Browser.
You need at least, a #Minimum of #Trustworthyness to hope, they strip the #bad Parts out of #Firefox, but you'll never know, if there's a #ZeroDayExploit out in the Wilderness.
This rules for EVERY Browser.
This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Marion Grau

@marion_grau @egerlach archived tweet: archive.ph/txuJ2 (andy yen == proton ceo)

huh, I was gonna link some reddit threads, but they have mostly been deleted. figures. also it seems the most critical comments are gone now, so it's not much use.

the guy himself also posted some responses to reddit, one under his own name, and one as "team proton" or something; but I kinda don't want to link to them if all the critical user responses to them are gone. but you can google them if you want I guess.

I felt his responses were "anti-excuses" of the type "I'm sorry you misunderstood my tweet", and felt more like he was doubling down on his opinion.

anyway, make of the tweet what you will 😀

in reply to bazkie 👩🏼‍💻 bitplanes 🎵

@bazkie @marion_grau @egerlach
Please give this one a good read .... medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-pr…

Redditors managed to create a flamefest based on unbiased views on poorly understood topics, which went out of control when Proton PR folks didn't manage to clear up the confusion (something they're known to be quite capable of - making it way worse). Such flamefests are not that unexpected ob Reddit these days. We can hopefully do better here without going fully Reddit hyperbolic.

in reply to bazkie 👩🏼‍💻 bitplanes 🎵

@bazkie @marion_grau @egerlach
I agree with your read on the situation. He said that republicans were looking out for the little guy and better for privacy than the dems. He also said trumps pick had a great track record (false). When called out he doubled down and only apologised for posting his personal views on a company account. I began transitioning from proton immediately.

I will not trust/associate with trump/MAGA supporters, asskissers or apologists.

in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

> Long term: It's time to really commit to building something better.

How does that happen? Mozilla used to be the answer to that, but it sounds like now we need a community/cooperative foundation supporting a hard fork of Firefox.

Is this something non-technical folks can contribute to, or do we wait and hope someone with know-how and resources kicks it off?

in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

I'm following this topic being a firefox user and slightly more than average tech/privacy-savy person and your point in using tor browser intrigue me but I always thought that the system on what TOR run is designed for very important use (dissident, whistle-blower) and a daily use would saturate it. Are things different, or changed, or simply I didn't get it right?
in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

if you're a Gnome user and can live without plugins etc, Gnome Web (Epiphany) is pretty good. It also has webapp support, so you could maybe bundle elk.zone for Mastodon.. (nicer than Tuba?). Qutebrowser is also pretty cool, but it's using Chromium, hence untrustworthy (imho). Servo looks promising, but it's highly alpha. FWIW, I ruled out Firefox a long time back because it's a Google funded project (hence no PWA support?).
in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

Remember the #RollingStones:
You can't always get, what You want -
but if You try sometimes,
You get what You need.

Use #Opera - it's good !
Unimaginable, what Work and Money it would cost, to maintain a complete Open Source Browser. Ask the #Debian #Community, for #Example, why they will not develop one. You can see a bit in the #Tor - Browser, what it takes to achieve this. It's #Firefox too, but it's the best, you can get so far. Or use #Lynx, a #Text Browser.

in reply to Mauve 👁💜

reshared this

in reply to PunnO)))

@ieure Yeah LibreWolf is a great option tbh. Is there a mobile equivalent?

I think Dev pressure is really not enough. I can't even do calls in slack in Firefox even though it has a decent WebRTC impl. I think a lot of it is lazyness tbh. But how can I pressure slack? I just have to open chrome for work. I'm glad there's at least degoogled forks even if they die off periodically.

Have you tried out ladybird? ladybird.org/

in reply to Mauve 👁💜

❝ Yeah LibreWolf is a great option tbh. Is there a mobile equivalent?

yes.

in #Android it’s not Fennec but ICERAVEN, but you have to use the FFUpdater app to have access to it:
f-droid.org/packages/de.marmar…

the app is brilliant in that it’s a one stop place for most official versions and unofficial forks of Firefox but also for the Chrome/Chromium forks.

i use Iceraven primarily and am happy with it.

@mauve @ieure @sarahjamielewis

in reply to Mauve 👁💜

@mauve LW doesn't have an Android version. I use Fennec, which is similar.

I'm aware of Ladybird, but the lead dev seems like a real shithead. Heard about this basically the day after I heard of Ladybird:

github.com/SerenityOS/serenity…

He's also an active blue-check Twitter user. Guy's out there telling everyone who he is.

in reply to PunnO)))

This entry was edited (7 months ago)

reshared this

in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

Did you heard about Floorp? It’s a Japanese fork with supplementary functions and some privacy enforced options. Explicitly inspired by Vivaldi, but built upon Firefox ESR (and soon upon the regular Firefox).

Perhaps you could give it a try?

EDIT: OK, I read your other post and some others about the new “Terms of Use”. Ooof… Mozilla, why do you want to ensh×ttify yourself, too? 😢

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

The best firefox fork atm:
@zenbrowser
Actually doing innovative things. And still open source.
See their website for info:
zen-browser.app/
@Zen
This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Am I?

Given @ami literally @ mentioned me in, sure, I'll add my bit.

I NEVER claimed, #Verso is ready to compete with products from #Ad / #AI corps eg. #Google / #Mozilla. With both sinking into #enshittification though, arguing over which has the least awful browser matters less than building better alternatives NOW.

My suggestion is supporting a non-profit group, making a #FOSS browser (Verso) based on a fast FOSS engine (@servo) to get it ready ASAP.

What's your suggestion Ami?

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

I feel similarly. So far I use Firefox and adjust the settings to opt out of the bad stuff - after all, much of the "use of data" refers to mechanisms that can be switched off, or even are off by default, but they must cover the worst case. I've never used Pocket or Sync and don't even have a Firefox account.
To me, librewolf.net sounds most promising. They explain in detail what they modify and why. It will be an adjustment for me because I use NoScript so far, not UBO.
in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

Firefox TOS and USpol

Sensitive content

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Saphkey 🕊️

@argv_minus_one @lupus_blackfur
you clearly have misunderstood what that meant.
Firefox is a web browser.. it is part of the traffic. It sends the data, it receives the data. How would Firefox work if it didnt decrypt the HTTPS data of this mastodon website??
It just states that when you type text into mastodon via Firefox and click Post, you give Firefox permission to do your INDICATED action. That action being posting the text to mastodon.

"When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a [...] license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content AS YOU INDICATE with your use of Firefox."

If you didnt INDICATE for Firefox to intercept that information and send it to Mozilla, then they wont, and you haven't given them the permission to do so.

Idk how more TLDR to make it for u

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Saphkey 🕊️

@argv_minus_one @lupus_blackfur
Ill agree that US probably means Mozilla.
But I still hold that "as you indicate" is meaningfull.

I think that one important thing here is that Firefox is no longer just a browser. "Firefox" includes a bunch of different Mozilla services that you have access to via it. That being for example its VPN service via Mullvad, Firefox sync account etc.
And all these services complicates things beyond being just a piece of standalone software.

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

for anyone who likes FF but has grown to distrust Mozilla you might be interested in librewolf.net

De-Mozilla'd Firefox if you will.

I use it on my laptop and its actually a much better experience due to my usage of Debian and Firefox ESR which has caused site issues in the past for me.

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Nelson

@lianna @ieure @mauve Ladybird has separated from the SerenityOS project and the problematic dev is now only working on Ladybird:

ladybird.org/posts/fork/

That said, SerenityOS culture may have been negatively affected by the attitudes of their former BDFL, who considered pronouns too political but not a Pepe the Frog icon. It may take time and effort to fully heal the community.