Notices by Sarah Jamie Lewis (sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social), page 2

>> 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

This part is entirely correct. And I really want you to understand that it is only so because of the end of that statement i.e. "other than what is described in the Privacy Notice"

The Privacy Notice, as outlined in my previous thread is incredibly broad.

>> "We've seem a little confusion"

There is no confusion, the usage and privacy policy are both incredibly clear and broad in what they say.

>> We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible.

They do not. This is incredibly condescending. Nothing about the "basic functionality" of a browser demands a "royalty-free, worldwide license". That is absurd.

Mozilla have published an update to this:
> "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 want to break this down.

https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/114072293410465140

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.

There is a tendency in all these conversations for people to make excuses. "Oh well they need to do it because <lawyers>", "Every other company does this" etc.

Be mature enough to take into account the entirity of a situation, to see the patterns of behaviour, to see the recent history, to believe that people will do what they say they will do.

Or to put it another way, to the apologists: "don't piss on my boots and tell me it's raining"

One thing I really want people to understand: regardless of the reasons for Mozilla introducing that ridiculously broad / privacy hostile terms of service / privacy policy; and regardless of their actual intent.

You should respect yourself, and your fellow humans, enough to not put up with that level of bullshit.

You deserve technology that works for you, technology that isn't built on shifting sands, whose behaviour doesn't radically change between minor updates; software that respects you.

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"

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.

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.

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.

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.

Really, what I would love to see is a project with a vision and principles.

Where is the browser with activity pub integration? Where is the browser with rss feeds? Where is the browser that doesn't have to disable the tracking crap, because it simply doesn't exist in the first place?

If we want a web that works for the people, we need to build a browser that takes responsibility for those values.

While understanding that that is a damn expensive thing to ask.

That or the dozen+ firefox forks agree to combine their efforts and maintain a shared hard-forked base.

That could work, but it might be a bigger ask.

I think Tor Project are probably best placed to do it - they are already as close to maintaining a hard fork of firefox you can be without actually maintaining a hard fork. I understand why they don't - but, if anyone has a shot of making that path work, I think it's them.

There is clearly a lot of effort fractured over a lot of projects, perhaps enough to actually take on the task, but I'm not aware of any project committed to a hard fork of firefox, with everything that entails (and if you had the resources to go that route, I'm not convinced that is the best path to take either)

I can only really think of a handful of groups I think have a chance at success, but I don't think any of them are currently considering it.

Many people are in my mentions talking about and/or promoting various firefox forks.

Look, if Mozilla can't afford to keep developing/maintaining firefox without resorting to the sad path, then the question that needs to be asked is how any other organization can? What about the approach is different?

It's one thing to package firefox with some of the bad things turned off. It's another to take on the responsibility of maintaining that codebase sans-mozilla.

Firefox, or at least the ideal of Firefox - an open browser that serves the interests of people rather than corporations is so important.

It's also an incredibly expensive proposition (in part because of how the web has evolved complexity, thanks in part to how corporations have driven, and ultimately practically captured various standards)

I deeply understand Mozilla's desire to continue existing to serve that mission...but it can't be like this.

There is no such thing as privacy-respecting advertising. At least not for any sane definition of "respect"

The arguments are technically nuanced, but I went into it a little a while back: https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/113199184170538484

Raising money is pointless if doing so compromises the values you claim to stand for.

Really sad to see Mozilla committed to such a dystopian vision of the future of the web.

"While Firefox remains the core of what we do, we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term"

source: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growth-planning-updates/

One thing I do want to do is write some more about the motivations behind senary (which I outline a little here: https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/113992174035936111)

I do think starting a fresh, thinking about how to balance anonymous/drive-by contributions with the general influx of spam that all repos see these days is going to make a big difference as the project evolves.