Can someone remind me why we stopped using Firefox a while back? There was some piece of news that broke everyone’s trust, but I can’t remember what Mozilla did. Was it a change in their user agreement?

  • sit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    Small suggestion: if you’re over 21 stop blindly doing what others do. Start questioning things and do what you think is best.

  • mhague@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Firefox used to have a “we’re a browser that won’t sell user data” promise. Then they changed their TOS and removed the promise, adding:

    When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."

    When people reacted to their TOS they said it was an accident, it’s just boilerplate, don’t take it seriously.

    Or in other words: an entity with a team of lawyers claimed ownership of all your data, and then downplayed it, and then has acted good since.

    Personally I stick my head way into the alligators mouth and still use Firefox.

  • Kissaki@feddit.org
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    5 days ago

    That was overblown drama. They didn’t change anything in practice. They clarified things by writing it down. You disable some defaults and have no issue. Even if you don’t, it’s not nearly as bad as other popular platforms.

    I never stopped using Firefox.

    If you want I can look for a comment I made quoting the relevant terms a while back. Or you can look for it yourself.

    Simple forks still depend on upstream. I’d rather support Mozilla than not, given no better sustainable alternative. They do some good stuff like Firefox, Thunderbird, and mdn.

  • exchange12rocks@lemm.ee
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    5 days ago

    The world in general switched from Firefox to Chrome several years ago because at that time (when just released) Chrome was new, shiny, and fast (much faster than Firefox). And at that time everyone loved Google (they still had their infamous “be no evil” motto). And Google also promoted their browser, and, given their web resources are immensely popular, that helped tremendously.

    That switch had nothing to do with recent concerns about privacy in Mozilla products.

  • Zak@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    When? There have been a few times people stopped using Firefox in large numbers.

    One of them was when Chrome first came out. Firefox (and every other browser) at the time ran every site in one process. As sites became more reliant on Javascript, which was usually poorly written, that meant any one tab having a problem made other sites and even the browser’s own UI unresponsive, or sometimes crashed the whole browser. Chrome’s multiprocess model was a revelation. Firefox didn’t get its own implementation until 2016.

    Recently, there’s been some movement away from Firefox due to Mozilla making decisions people don’t feel align with open source, the open web, and privacy. The one that has me looking at forks is the planned addition of terms of use to the browser. Terms of use are for an ongoing relationship between a service operator and a user; Firefox is local software I’m operating myself on a computer I own. Its fine for optional online services like Sync to have terms of use, but the browser should work without those.

    • RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I asked ChatGPT is similar question earlier this week. This was the answer.

      While Mozilla has not been found to sell user tracking data in the conventional sense, the introduction of features like PPA (Privacy-Preserving Attribution) and changes in privacy policy language have understandably caused concern among users. These developments suggest a shift towards balancing user privacy with the need to support advertising models. Users prioritizing privacy should stay informed about these changes and adjust their browser settings accordingly.

  • Rose@slrpnk.net
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    5 days ago

    “We” didn’t stop using Firefox. Open source boycotts are complicated because the software is separate from the developers. You can keep using the software even if you disagree with the development organisation.

    Mozilla organisation is getting problematic for a whole lot of reasons. My issue with them is that they seem to be in the “more money than they know what to do with it” phase. They’re flush with cash, but it’s not reflecting to the product. If they buy an ad company and plan AI stuff, maybe things aren’t going well.

    Problem is, there’s no viable competing organisation. Protest forks of software don’t really work that well unless you can actually guarantee the development support. Compare this to what happened when OpenOfficeOrg successfully moved to LibreOffice - developers saw the old organisation didn’t work, so they made a new one that did.

  • Nyticus@kbin.melroy.org
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    6 days ago

    I stopped using Firefox for four core reasons:

    Their investment into AI How they submit and work with their Google overlords to some degree Their browser putting in more and more unnecessary and unasked features (like Firefox account for one) Their Terms of Service

  • Guidy@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Firefox is better than most but still smugly makes anti-user changes which are complete dog shit.

    Remember when they turned off your ability to choose to load extensions that weren’t signed, because fuck you?

    Fuck Pepperidge farm, I remember that shit.

    Or how about DNS over https, because fuck you, user, why should you have any say over name resolution when you might use that power to block ads and malware?

  • bigDottee@geekroom.tech
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    7 days ago

    I never stopped using it. There are privacy issues with all browsers. I like how Firefox works, but I regularly end up using Firefox, chrome, and edge all at the same time. I use them for some compartmentalization of my tasks and work lol

    • Kissaki@feddit.org
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      5 days ago

      What’s your privacy issues with Firefox? How do they compare to those of the other browsers?