Not a good look for Firefox. Third partners and device fingerprinting clearly mentioned in the documents.
The move is the latest development in a series of shifts Mozilla has undergone over the past year.
The gecko engine and Firefox forks, such as Tor, Mullvad, Librewolf, and Arkenfox, are stables of private, open source web browsing.
In fact, Mozilla’s is one of the few browser engines out there, in a protocol-heavy industry that many say only corporate or well-funded non-profits can reliably develop.
What is more, daily driving the more hardened-for-privacy Firefox derivatives can be frowned upon by many sites, including your bank and workplace.
Mozilla’s enshittification leaves the open source community without a good alternative to Firefox, after years of promoting it as a privacy-friendly alternative to spyware-cum-browser Chrome.
On the contrary, I think this is a responsible way to operate. The terms of use apply to the Mozilla distributed binary, not the open source version and open source forks, and I don’t think additional terms shut them out of that. The privacy policy is clear, concise as can be and links so that people can jump directly to what is being collected.
People are saying it is Bad News
So, uhh, you want to tell us who is saying it’s bad news?
gestures vaguely in a direction
Ehh, people, you know?
Your mastodon feed might be different that mine, lmao
Can you be more specific than pointing in a vague direction?
This is trolling. It is beyond self-evident that the Open Source fediverse has thoroughly criticized the latest Mozilla move. I myself point out device fingerprinting and third party vendors. You respond to neither approach. You want me to do homework and quantify the sentiment on the trending Mozillla hashtag? Sealioning. Diigressing the topic of conversation? Report and block you sad impotent spook troll.
Onus probandi.
You make the claims, you serve the proof. You can’t point at a vague, general direction and go “here, proof!”. Especially not a social media feed, that’s the most subjective, volatile “proof” you could provide.
Quote me the text, in its full context, where it says that Mozilla is selling the data they are “now collecting”, or that it was optional for them without degrading services. Because I can’t find it.
All I see is data that Mozilla is required to collect to provide existing services, they are now putting it in black on white. I don’t really care what the “general opinion” is, opinions do not automatically become facts once sufficient people hold them.
I’ve seen Mozilla do bad stuff, this is just a very standard privacy policy update. Let’s criticize them when they actually deserve it, and encourage them the rest of the time.
Also, nice strawman instead of simply answering my question. 🥰
Librewolf doesn’t exist in mobile
And IronFox don’t exist on desktop. That’s why they’re listed together.
I see, thanks
Well it’s been a nice time while it lasted but this should be a lesson that nothing is safe from enshitification and corruption. Fortunately there are a few options till something better arrives. Personally I’m waiting for Ladybug
I’m looking into Ladybird browser that everyone here is talking about and I can’t find anything about when they will release something.
Keep an eye on it, but it’s not ready yet.
Alpha will drop around 2026[site], but they have several contributors so who knows. Compiled it a few months ago at it was just a browser without engine, not sure how much it developed now but I’m hopeful
Does using a fork like Librewolf and Ironfox keep you safe from this?
I don’t think we understand very well the threat model here. Are we talking about having a Mozilla account or the web engine itself. If you have an account they will probably start doing mining shit with it. What about activists researching certain topics then? The content browsed can be visible to Mozilla if they use their account for syncing bookmarks. That should be a dealbreaker right there. No different than Meta user-profiling the fuck out of your engagement behaviors. Now if this is NOT the case and you haven’t a Mozilla account, I assume that the version of the web engine available back at the time of the fork is exactly the same. So far so good.
The problem is that browsers are hard, and there is a ton of web protocols to be implemented, various fixes for security, support extensions and other QOL features. WORD ON THE STREET is that tasks like these cannot be undertaken as solo/hobby projects, that funding and an organization structure is essential. The teams behind LibreWolf, Waterfox, etc have a track record of already lagging behind Firefox’s version updates. Same goes with user-profile and configuration sets like Arkenfox (if I am not wrong). You may tweak the conf all you want, but if privacy and anonymity is compromised at the web engine level, these forks will be left with little to do about it. Then the only option will be to keep using an old version of the web engine (sacrificing security and quality of life extensions), or ditching the gecko web engine altogether.
That is why people are looking for genuine alternatives to the web engine.
I keep Firefox, brave, Librewolf, and Vivaldi All configured and loaded with my plugins and bookmarks.
When Google pulled out of Firefox funding I expected them to go down a dark path.
I don’t know that any of those choices of browsers are going to be significantly better than the others long-term. I’m also hoping for ladybug eventually.
LW doesn’t seem to play nice with some of my sites and some of my plugins. It’s the one I want most to work. The last time I tried it, delivering pass keys out of bitwarden in it didn’t work. And that kind of makes it a no-go for me. I should try it again though it’s been at least a year.
I’m pretty sure brave would sell my kidneys if they could. But they are the only one on the list that’s truly funded and they keep up with the Joneses on YouTube ad blocking. And there also probably the strongest browser for anti-fingerprinting at the moment.
Vivaldi seems to work okay but it’s just a Google clone, they’ve only dedicated to not enforcing manifest V3 for “as long as they could.”
I thought Mullvad was the best in anti-fingerprinting. Anyone can check their own configuration with EFF’s “cover your tracks” site.
They slightly edge out brave on vanilla. Once you load all of your plugins and stuff braves a little better at lying about it. To be fair they’re both close enough it doesn’t matter either one will get the job done. I usually think of mull as a leave it vanilla and use it when you need to leave no trace.
Note just to be sure, Mull is a different thing than Mullvad. What you wrote makes sense for Mullvad, but I am not so sure if this is the case with Mull, the mobile app.
I’m only dealing with desktop browsers in this and trying to type with autocomplete from an uncomfortable position. I’m fairly certain privacy doesn’t really exist in OTC Android.
Not an exhaustive list on the Gecko engine or its forks:
- Mozilla Firefox (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS)
- LibreWolf (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Waterfox (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Tor Browser (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android)
- Pale Moon (Windows, Linux)
- Basilisk (Windows, Linux)
- K-Meleon (Windows)
- Midori (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- SeaMonkey (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Floorp (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- CometBird (Windows)
- IceDragon (Windows)
- Flock (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Capyloon (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Ladybird (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android)
- QupZilla (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Zen Browser (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Comodo IceDragon (Windows)
- Otter Browser (Windows, macOS, Linux)
I thought Ladybird was its own seperate project and engine.
Doesn’t using tor or librewolf fingerprint you from the standpoint of using a rare browser?
Time for Ladybird to release their first alpha?
Lmao, this is fascism behavior
OK now that arstechnica has written about it, shills might stop nagging in the comments about my titling. LMAO
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Correct me if I’m wrong but ladybird is focused on a new browser, and not a new browser that is privacy oriented? Their language is pretty specific about donations and independence, but I didn’t catch anything that specifically denotes privacy.
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Looks like Mozilla has decided they can no longer ignore the money they can gain from having more and more data to sell.
Joining Google on the ad/data sales Evil Side.
🤷♂️ 🤷♂️ 🖕
Will be very sad if they continue down this slippery slope. I guess my last donation will stay just that 🫠
