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. "
Source: Lundke journal.
That’s fair, but I think not totally right.
I think Firefox is a great browser, which is why I’m using forks, not ditching it entirely. I still use Mozilla services, and I will continue to keep tabs on and support the development of the browser. However, I will not sacrifice the little privacy I can scrape up by agreeing to terms of use that gather my data, even if anonymized, for use in serving me ads, regardless of whether I think the company behind these practices needs to exist or not—and in this case, I do think Mozilla, and Firefox as a project, must remain strong if we want a free internet for all.
This implicit trust you seem to have in Mozilla, however, is not something I share. First, AI integration, then it’s the terms of use, then it’s the language around data privacy… Google used to say “Don’t Be Evil.” I don’t believe Mozilla will stay good because it’s Mozilla and it’s been good. I don’t like the recent steps they’ve been taking, and so I’ll stop using Firefox; that’s as far as it goes.
Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I don’t want to compromise on this.
I don’t think you’re being unreasonable and in truth I share your concerns. Forks are doing a good job at refining the experience but should the Firefox project collapse, I doubt any fork can meaningfully continue the development needed for such a huge and complex project without the full-time and experienced development team who have been working on the project for an incredibly long time.
I wish Mozilla could figure out a more powerful way to generate revenue that doesn’t require advertising in any form.
I wonder if a yearly fundraising drive like Wikipedia could help. They generated $250Mil+ last time they did.