cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26244492
The answer to “what is Firefox?” on Mozilla’s FAQ page about its browser used to read:
The Firefox Browser is the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit that doesn’t sell your personal data to advertisers while helping you protect your personal information.
Now it just says:
The Firefox Browser, the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit, helps you protect your personal information.
In other words, Mozilla is no longer willing to commit to not selling your personal data to advertisers.
A related change was also highlighted by mozilla.org commenter jkaelin, who linked direct to the source code for that FAQ page. To answer the question, “is Firefox free?” Moz used to say:
Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it, and we don’t sell your personal data.
Now it simply reads:
Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it.
Again, a pledge to not sell people’s data has disappeared. Varma insisted this is the result of the fluid definition of “sell” in the context of data sharing and privacy.
Some counter-points for those of you who want to dig further:
So there are two explanations here:
Both are certainly possible, but given that the vast majority of Mozilla’s funding is from the Google search partnership, I think the former is more likely.
Regardless, I believe Mozilla is scummy, especially since Rossmann points out that Firefox development could be sustained on only investment returns of the org. Here’s the relevant portion of the above video where he discusses that (specifically this timestamp, where he goes over their 2022 and 2023 returns, but the earlier bit is instructive as well).