Importantly, if you have already opted out of sending data to Mozilla, this change will not affect you. It only sends data if you have the setting turned on. It takes just a few clicks to entirely disable it, and Mozilla deletes all record of your browser within 30 days from turning off this feature. If you’re worried about it, do it now, it’s just under Settings > Privacy & Security. Instructions are also linked in the blog post.
I’m not a fan of the telemetry being enabled by default but having the option to completely disable it makes it not that bad. Though Mozilla definitely doesn’t need search history data (unless the law enforcements told them to collect it) so this change is kinda sus
Mozilla Foundation has a wholly owned subsidiary that is Mozilla Corporation that is for-profit.
For instance the revenue from Google, so they’re the default search engine, is seen by Mozilla Corporation. So things search-related will indeed be part of their for-profit arm.
It’s not a loophole. As a subsidiary, profits are still invested into the nonprofit and they’re still guided by the Mozilla manifesto. It just lets them do more and raise more funds which would be difficult to do with nonprofit status (selling default search engine for instance). Here’s their original press release when they incorporated Mozilla Corporation in 2005.
A non-profit can, in fact, profit, but it has specific rules on what it can do with those profits. Tax law is a rabbit hole and I don’t even wanna peer in
From what I read in their blog post, nobody is keeping your search history data. It only tracks how often people in general search for things in specific categories, so nobody will be able to learn anything about you specifically from that data.
Then what’s the point in collecting such data? It won’t help to fix bugs, add new features or even make useful statistics to show publicly. Only personalized ads is what comes to mind. Yes it seems to be anonymized well enough but still ad companies love such data. Maybe Mozilla wants to implement a custom ads functionality that uses this data or they just want to sell it idk. Still changes in this direction are kinda sus
I believe there was an experiment making weather data more accessible through the URL bar, e.g. when people start searching for weather there, which could be useful. Presumably, telemetry like this can help determine which of such features to prioritise.
I could indeed also imagine ads, but then not based on keeping a file on you with all your interests and sharing that with advertisers, but by locally choosing between a couple of categories of ads and showing the ones that are related to your current search, without anyone having to know what you’re actually searching for.
It’s desktop extensions. Most mobile browsers only support a subset of all available extensions (including Firefox!). Now, Firefox will support its whole library of extensions.
They only mention “open extension ecosystem” idk if that means everything and also I haven’t found an extension not working on mine yet I have even installed a flash player extension for flash games on my browser so no opinion on those statements
The title: "Prepare your Firefox desktop extension for the upcoming Android release"
End of the first paragraph: "Here’s everything developers need to know to get their Firefox desktop extensions ready for Android usage and discoverability on AMO…"
End of the second paragraph: “so why not start optimizing your desktop extension for mobile-use right away?”
also I haven’t found an extension not working on mine yet I have even installed a flash player extension for flash games on my browser so no opinion on those statements
And those were installed from the mozilla addon library? With full support for a mobile interface? And you tried every extension available?
I have even installed a flash player extension for flash games
What u highlight desktop for, the article is about android and the 10 extensions it has so far, your own highlight says “about upcoming android release” desktop is only mentioned for devs to optimize their shit for mobile use.
And no my extensions were not from mozilla thats my whole point I can get extensions elsewhere this whole time, which is why I mock mobile mozilla users in the comments thinking mozilla did something revolutionary.
The article is about how i currently Firefox only supports 10 extensions, specifically developed for mobile, but in the future it will allow all the extensions that are available for desktop. And how no other mobile browser so far accepts all desktop extensions, making Firefox the first.
Hopefully I don’t get many downvotes for this, but it isns’t necessary to deny anything related to AI and bombard Mozilla for this. Sure, Copilot is a disaster, because it is a service and will call home to M$ and collect your data. But all of what Mozilla offers us is on-device AI, which is exceptional. I’ve been waiting so long for on-device AI-based webpage translation, so people don’t need to rely on external services like Google or Bing to translate any more.
Same, their local translation tech is absolutely great! If they keep working “AI” features that are pretty much quality of life ML stuff I’m all in for it.
Yeah the Airbnb, PayPal, eBay pedigree has me more concerned than anything. I wouldn’t want any of Mozilla’s stuff to be anything close to these things.
Would you call any of those successful products ‘good’ tho? Yes they have made a lot of money but at the same time…2 of 3 are straight up evil. Ebay…eh. Could be worse. Thats the best I can say for them. Paypal has straight up stolen people’s money on countless occasions and gotten away with it. Then there was that huge violin fiasco. Airbnb is flat out a part of destroying the housing market, they know this, they don’t care.
I get it, most big companies are ‘menaces’ like you say but…these are absolutely horrible companies responsible for true evil and, odds are, he’s going to bring that energy to Mozilla.
Assuning thats normally for hotels and such, not as easily, no. AirBnB's specific purpose is to remove barriers of entry for hosting people in your property. Initially that meant renting one of your rooms to a traveler on the cheap. Now it means companies that would otherwise have to jump through tons of regulatory hoops to put their properties on booking sites.
Not to mention... even if its the same, then its the same and still not a useful service, yeah? It's just another booking service. Which, coincidentally, mostly extracts fees.
No, but you are bringing up the merrits of an equally evil company and said thiet success is a sign of why they should be at the helm. I’m just trying to understand this.
Air bnb is not evil, it’s people exchanging services for money. They just resolve disputes, show reviews, etc.
The difference with PayPal is that they are not in any business, so they can’t necessarily resolve disputes other than relating to the payment itself. But the credit card issuer has exactly the same job, so PayPal is an extraneous intermediary
Air BNB is, knowingly, helping to destroy the housing market. It’s so bad cities are talking about banning them because of how they are driving up prices.
I don’t really disagree, but what do you want as an organization, someone that built a “good” product that nobody ever used and fell into obscurity? Or someone that built a product that attracted and retained millions of users that you might consider “bad”? And tbh, most of the “bad” from these products is just because of their size and monopoly, which would arguably be a good problem to have for Mozilla.
Probably an easy choice if I was on the board.
Also, not that it matters to our discussion but just as a minor correction, the new CEO is a woman.
So you can’t. There are cert stores, new protocols and ciphers, and eventually u patched zero days.
I know this because I’ve been playing with a g3 powerboat and all the browsers at this point are no longer maintained to support the above things as of last year. The last person working on it gave up
Not much of problem. Run in a VM, disable certificate validation. Html5 and javascript is still going to last a long long time. Anything that can’t run with that is soydev shit and you don’t need it.
Yes, the percentage is high. Most people would be annoyed to have another selection screen in the setup process.
But I do think I saw more people using non-Google search engines since Google was forced to provide a search engine selection screen in the setup process.
To me it sounds like an idea most people would say is a good idea because people like choice on principle, but the vast majority of people will then just use Chrome anyway.
But at least they can decide for themselves, even if it’s just because of the logo. The friction to switch the browser after the fact is way too high, especially on mobile nearly all people use the default browser.
If you ever see a headline that says “x% of people believe/want/feel y”, it’s nonsense. You can manufacture a crooked methodology to get x% of people to say anything.
“Can I have a minute of your time? There has been evidence that people who use alternative browsers are more likely to commit acts of terrorism and human trafficking. Would you be in favour of more support for alternative browsers, or would you rather have higher quality public schools?”
And just like magic, you can now write a headline that only 2% of people want a browser choice screen.
It looks like they are riding the AI wave to bring more features that are just good, local ML-based, and I’m all in for it. Firefox Translation is a great recent example, it’s good.
when used to enhance accessibility? me. especially in this case where it’s used for better alt text and descriptive text in pdfs, a tech that has long struggled with that.
AI actually can be very good at translating things locally while keeping tone and intent, and thats what mozilla mentions here. I’m fully down with AI powered local translation tools native to firefox, it’ll put it way above the competition
Some LLMs are low enough in resource usage to do this on weak and older PCs
Mobile FF is already awesome with UBlock Origin and YT background playback extensions. I wish to install an auto redirect extension. (Twitter to Nitter) I know it is doable on beta w/ extensions etc. but I want to see them on normal Firefox.
That’s a lie sir. Brave blocks ads out of the box. Vivaldi also has ad block filters. You can add custom filters to both browsers. Also edge has shitty ad blocker. Kiwi browser supports almost all chrome extensions. Basically almost all except chrome and still you can block most of the ads using correct dns server.
Firefox is as much botnet as others. Full of telemetry, diagnostics, pocket and other shit. That’s why there are secure forks. Firefox in stock form is as much botnet as others. Also firefox is selling out to the same google so don’t pretent it’s better because it’s not.
Accepting a ton of money from Google to make it the default search engine isn’t selling out to them. Any concerned user will know how to change the default.
Yeah that's the tack I've heard, just buy a month. I decided to buy a year, because I have existed for fucking ever, and there are a good number of those data brokers that drag their feet longer than a month to remove your info.
With all the discounts they offer it is, but technically Incogni is 12.98/month. And with as many YouTube sponsor spots as they buy, I’d imagine they’re just trying to get as many people signed up as they can, and will stop offering as many discounts once they’ve burned through their investor cash.
They do have a free tier, and while it doesn’t auto request your data removal they can at least notify you which data brokers have your info so you can make the requests manually yourself. monitor.mozilla.org
Edit: The data removal features are currently available only in the US according to their FAQ:
Why is data removal only available in the US? When will it be available in my country?
Data removal is only available in the US because of legislation that allows data brokers to operate there. In many other countries and in regions like the EU, laws like GDPR prevent these websites from collecting and selling people’s personal information without their consent. We’re exploring ways to expand protection and personal data removal outside of the US where needed.
I did click too and I see no mention of data brokers, only data breaches. Could this be location targeted? I also tried from the blog post and got no way to pay for the service. I’m in Canada btw.
Mozilla Monitor used to be just for monitoring breaches but they have recently added in the ability for you to monitor your own personal information that databrokers have on you.
Edit: According to their FAQ it looks like this has geographic restraints, I’ll update my original comment.
Well besides that it goes to a good cause, most other similar services, how do you prove they actually did the work? I mean you’d have to manually inquire to each and every broker wouldn’t you? You’re essentially taking their word for it (I’m personally a huge fan of OptMeOut, especially for $20 a year)
I bought apple devices because their software support is solid and the user interface is pretty.
But the limitations were not worth the trade off. As there are now decent alternatives and I’m no longer stuck with just android on the phone side of things anymore. There have been quite a few advancements made in the linux phone area.
I now have pixel 3a with ubuntu touch, old thinkpad with linux mint, a steam deck and gaming rig with linux nobara. I got the whole 9-yards. I will using more of linux as time goes on.
I don’t have this problem. The android and iOS YT apps are similar, I was talking about the OS in general
Not sure what’s wrong with paying for listening to music. Used regional pricing so for me YT premium is like 4€/month. I consider that a pretty good deal.
I remember downloading some app in highschool off the playstore to make my old ass galaxy note4 UI look like an IPhone X, had identical features and everything. It looked legit to my friends who used them their whole lives. Didn’t really like it but its out there.
Oh and there’s free apps like Innertune which is basically YT music+
If it was the ui app you were asking for it was called Launcher iOS 15, but they made an 18 version since then. I’d get a system adblock or DNS before installing any of them, assuming they work on your phone anyway
Don’t mind people blaming you for choosing a brand. Their ire is misplaced, it’s the company’s fault as much as it’s the consumers fault and the consumers should focus their energy in convincing companies to change their ways or loose their loyalty. This petty meaningless victim blaming helps no one.
It would help if you voted with your wallet from now on though.
Honestly the reason I own and use an old iPad, it was practically the only tablet that could do what I wanted. I used a Mac mini for the better part of five years before I switched to Windows and finally Linux! (It’s ok if Linux isn’t for you)
I get the appeal, their hardware is very nice and I still wish other manufacturers matched the tolerances Apple sets for their hardware. I just can’t buy from a company behaving like that. Also good man using your hardware for as long as reasonably possible! 😁 We only have one earth after all.
If you are so keen to know, then you will just have to wait a few more years. Firefoxes development is rapidly derailing into nonsense recently. They will have to either kick out their current leadership or they will be reduced to a data sucking, adware company sooner or later.
Oh yes, as opposed to Google or Microsoft who definitely aren’t already data-sucking, predatory adware companies. No thanks, I’ll stick with the lesser evil.
If you’re going to lie to everyone at least make it sound believable.
Do you read any tech news? If so how did u miss every single mozilla headline of the past months? Something being the lesser evil doesnt turn truths into lies.
At least this is opt-in, and Firefox still allows for manifest v3 extensions, and, on the whole, isn’t using a engine funded by a billion dollar company that’s doing everything in it’s power to spy on you.
Yeah i was kinda overreacting but it really isnt looking good for firefoxes future at this point imo. As long as its open source there will at least be forks like librewolf.
Yeah idk either sadly. But i know that having only two relevant browsers on the market is like the US party system. Destined to fail.
Nothing lasts forever just like Steam or anything else will one day turn to shit. But pretending like everything is fine will just lead to lots of “we shouldve seen it coming”.
It also works on the Fennec branch for people who want a fully stable build that has full addon support, but yeah this is going to open it up to a lot more people, so hopefully more people will use Firefox
That’s just regular Firefox with the addon restrictions and trademarks removed,. That doesn’t just magically spawn API support. I thought you meant the 68.x branch which actually had broad extension support and received one additional update over Firefox 68 because the ESR branch was further updated for a bit: apkmirror.com/…/fennec-f-droid-68-12-0-release/
I was a bit hung up on the term ‘branch’ because in my understanding Fennec F-Droid falls more under patch set. Mozilla used Fennec as code name for Firefox Mobile before the GeckoView migration and I had hoped the old Fennec branch would live on in some shape or form.
Yeah I’m aware of that name’s origins. People use “branch” to describe Waterfox and Mull as well. If you ask about “Fennec branch” in current year, it’s what I’ve linked. Nearly anyone who talks about it is referring to that. Just a heads up.
Its current poor extension support is the reason I’ve been using Kiwi Browser, which is a basic Chromium build with full extension support, including loading from local storage.
Same here. I use custom collections on Fennec F-Droid but the inability to properly sideload keeps me on the auto rebased builds of Kiwi Browser. That and support for the black OLED theme and night mode website retheming built in.
Very glad to see this come to Firefox though! Hopefully they can also get those other bits added in.
At least when using Kiwi in desktop mode (via Samsung DeX), Kiwi doesn’t fill out passwords for me. There also is no interest in supporting Firefox Sync.
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