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 (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/firefox-terms-of-use/)
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
@sarahjamielewis I've been enjoying the various "ungoogled chromium" forks out there like Bromite.
@mauve @sarahjamielewis Using any Chromium-based browser gives Google leverage to dictate how the web works, which they should not have, because they cannot be trusted.
Chrome is the new IE6.
@ieure @sarahjamielewis What is your preferred alternative? Does your preferred alternative work for most cases and put pressure on Google? I use it because I need web apps to work and it is open source.
@mauve @sarahjamielewis Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
@ieure @sarahjamielewis 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? https://ladybird.org/
@mauve @sarahjamielewis 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:
https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/6814
He's also an active blue-check Twitter user. Guy's out there telling everyone who he is.
@ieure @mauve @sarahjamielewis It's a long-running pattern of behavior that has gotten worse lately, either emboldened as other tech figures come out as fascist without consequences, or falling further down some fascist internet rabbit hole (or both).
The lead Ladybird dev is now essentially endorsing white replacement theory: https://corteximplant.net/objects/f2d30c92-a64f-4154-940f-99080479f0c8
@skyfaller @mauve @sarahjamielewis christ what an asshole
@skyfaller @ieure @sarahjamielewis Yiiiikes. Thank you for the heads up, I was not aware of that. Also gonna give fennic a shot on android ty. I've been using Firefox Beta on there (in addition to my bespoke browser) and it's been a decent experience.
@skyfaller @ieure @mauve @sarahjamielewis Is that just the Ladybird dev or the entire Serenity project?
@lianna @ieure @mauve @sarahjamielewis Ladybird has separated from the SerenityOS project and the problematic dev is now only working on Ladybird:
https://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.
@skyfaller @lianna @ieure @mauve @sarahjamielewis oof. Thanks for the heads up. Christ, how hard is it to just be kind?
❝ 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:
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.marmaro.krt.ffupdater
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.
@ieure @mauve @sarahjamielewis the best solution I can come up with for the time being is to donate to Servo every month in the hope it will become a viable browser some day, while continuing to use a Firefox derivative in the meantime.
I'm not saying you should do this but it's the best I can do for now.
@mauve @sarahjamielewis I use LibreWolf. It's a Firefox fork, so if a site works in FF, it should work in LW, though may need some minor tweaking, as LW ships with stricter defaults. It works for substantially all sites for me.
Me using a non-Chrome browser doesn't put pressure on Google, nor do I think they'd be responsive if it did.
There are two problems here. If we're talking pressure, web developers are who need it, because when one rendering engine has the dominant marketshare that Blink does, they can ignore the others without much consequence (to them). That's a barrier to switching. Same story as IE in the naughts, we know this already.
The second problem is having a browser you can switch to. Any Firefox fork is a short-term bandaid over the gaping wound of Mozilla's poor stewardship, which will only continue to worsen; if Mozilla goes away, or gets bought by ghouls, or continues becoming ghouls themselves, those can't continue independently. And the web is so complex now that it's its own barrier to entry.
I don't know what to do about that. Probably the likeliest outcome is that we admit the corpos won, they colonized the web, and it's time to start rethinking this stuff from the ground up.