Innovation and privacy go hand in hand here at Mozilla…
Is this the time to drop firefox?
Drop it for what?
Librefox? Or something else? Don’t know, but since Firefox is often recommended for privacy, I was wondering if this changes things?
Is anonymous data collection really that bad? They’ve also been open and explained their whole process. Like surely data collection needs to happen at some level to inform new features and design?
No it’s not that bad. They indeed are open about it. But it feels like baby steps in the wrong way. I don’t really have an opinion but I was just a bit disappointed about the path they’re going on. Because I don’t see the added value of knowing what users search for. So i was curious about opinions from more educated people.
The value is likely that they’re selling it. Because they’re a non-profit, and they have to make money somehow. Or they’re using it to develop some kind of ai search function.
But the important, critical fact here is that Mozilla has routinely demonstrated that they can be trusted when they tell you “You can turn this off, and if you turn this off, it is actually off, and it will stay off.”
You will never see that from Google or Microsoft or any of the others.
Look at the part where they mentioned that if you already disabled telemetry, this new telemetry is also disabled. Think about how rare that is nowadays with any consumer software from most big for-profit tech companies. New bullshit is always on by default, even if you disabled it previously. The fact Mozilla respected that puts them miles ahead of any of their competitors.
As for the “path they’re going on”, I don’t know what to tell you, man. Every company is on this same path right now. The economics of the internet and the tech industry have gone to absolute shit, where privacy, user choice, competitive markets, and non-profits are all dying a slow painful death to enrich wall street. Mozilla will probably get caught in it too, but the best we can hope for is they hold out the longest.
mozilla is on a bad path, but they are still the most privacy respecting (with configuration) option of the big browsers today.
Un-Googled Chromium?
Edit: Guess even FOSS has its limits
UN googled chromium is pretty good honestly.
But… you will lose lots of privacy options with manifest v3.
Are we ignoring the part where you can disable it the same way you always could?
They even when out of their way to assure you if you already had telemetry disabled, absolutely nothing is changing for you and no data is being collected now.
Still hate default firfox build u cant disable telemetry in about: config. Gotta go with librewolf.
I’m not a fan of automated data collection, regardless of the reason. I see the merit, though, but I won’t allow it. The post is very clear about the preserved anonymity of the collected data, which is good, and on how to easily opt out, which is great.
This statement, however, was a bit strange. Almost like they are being flippant on local laws. Since I know this isn’t the case here, they should have phrased it different. (Emphasis mine)
Your search activities are handled with the same level of confidentiality as all other data regardless of any local laws surrounding certain health services.
They definitely could have phrased this better. I think what they mean is that their level of confidentiality meets or exceeds local laws.
