People always confuse Mozilla with Firefox…
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why confusing ? firefox depends on the financial support from mozilla.
Thread got too long for me to care enough to read it all. For anyone who happens to read my response, here’s my take.
- Yes it did drive me from firefox, I went to waterfox because a few quick symlinks was enough to carry on as normal…mostly. Did have to replace an addon and remove 1 or 2.
- The issue is not that firefox needs access to that our data but that mozilla does not need that access and those TOU give mozilla that access.
- I understand where services like the mozillavpn are concerned that mozilla needs at least some access to our data, I (and probably everyone else here) draw no issue with that. What we draw issue with is giving mozilla unrestricted access to our data.
- Think of firefox like a bathroom, and mozilla the company that maintains the quality of the bathroom. You wouldn’t be okay with them slap cameras, microphones and other crap to monitor how you use the bathroom so why would you be okay with mozilla doing the same with firefox?
The old acceptable standards in privacy and general understanding are slowly being replaced by the new.
What remains 'tween the old and the new is fraught with discontent and ignorance; misinformation and disinformation abounds; fake news reigns supreme in this context.
Or, to state it another way;
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Actually they already did - it was just not explicitly stated.
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This video tries to explain it. More or less the privacy terms already stated on how Mozilla was and is using your provided data. It was just not clearly stated. Based on new US laws they had to react.
How they communicated those changes is debatable. Mozilla was always for profit and always provided Firefox as they did. For the upcoming changes to be still relevant terms get updated and adjusted.
GNOME and KDE also provide webbrowsers. If they display all websites correctly is another story.
This video gives a more neutral overall overview.
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Let’s all just be thankful there are numerous browsers available in the repos/AUR. None of us are forced to use any browser and can instead use our preferred browser in many/most cases. This hasn’t always been the case if one remembers the history of personal computing.
Years ago, I gave up Firefox in favor of Brave. I was motivated by a technical issue, I had a problem with Firefox when it would remember open tabs and reopen them at startup. I looked for help on many forums, here as well, but unfortunately I never solved the problem. Of course, I thought about going back to Firefox, but regardless of the version, this problem still existed. I was deluding myself that an update would solve it. However, that’s not all that made me give up on Mozilla products.
I’ve wondered about this before, looking at where Mozilla puts its money. After all, it’s a foundation. Here is the link:
When I see politics creeping into open source, it makes me chuckle. It’s the same with the GNOME project. I know,
that I won’t use anything that came out of Mozilla or the GNOME project anymore. If you are looking for alternatives to Thunderbird then I recommend Claws Mail, I’ve been using it for years.
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Really depends on what’s important to you. The user experience is radically different on, say Edge, Brave, and Chrome. Under the hood there may exist the same hardware, but the interiors make for a radically different ride.
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Good film. My favourite part is the extremely and unusually long fight scene. Not because I like fight scenes. I like that the creator of the film was trying to make the point about how much some people don’t want to see uncomfortable truths. He really did not want to put the glasses on 
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Very informative article. I’m surprised (maybe I’m not) that this doesn’t generate more conversation anywhere.
The problem I see is that the information is the opposite of clear. They completely adopt Google’s and Microsoft’s (and, let’s face it: most commercial app developer’s these days) wordplay which erases the distinction between a software and its …. maker? “Operator” … software does not exist any more, only service. Therefore, whoever provides the “service” needs to access the information – stands to reason, don’t it?
It’s of course complete ■■■■■■■■■ It’s a play on words to swindle billions of people out of their precious data. Whether or not Firefox is funnelling data to Mozilla that it should not be extracting is not the point for me. It’s the fact that Mozilla pretends to have forgotten the difference, and thereby makes it even harder to work out who gets which data or not. Changing words about the facts is more powerful than changing the facts because it prevents us from knowing or discussing the facts with anyone who adopts the language – and Mozilla just joined the ranks of those who use such words.
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