Mozilla doesn't actually care that much about privacy or freedom, it's just marketing to make line go up and to the right while Mozilla staff can keep collecting paychecks for being "the good guys". There's a lot of money involved.
There is a big disconnect between what they say and what they do.
They're not an ad company, so Google/Chrome is obviously worse, but if you care about privacy you don't ship a browser with surveillance features in it (which is what Firefox is).
I am happy this project exists, and I will support them. This is how free software is supposed to work.
I'm personally not crazy about telemetry implying information is uploaded to a software provider, but from experience I know that trying to create a software without getting in-use data is basically flying blind. You cannot expect users to tell you about problems or bugs they have, they will just stop using your software and you will never know why.
Apple was throttling the CPU when the battery was old and could not sustain such power draw peaks in an effort to make the device remain usable for a longer period with a mostly-consumed battery pack. Had they not done so, the device would be unusable sooner.
To assert that it is to make you buy new hardware is a factual error.
You may not force feed me cookies.
Even with all telemetry disabled (including the option "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla") and without anything showing on that page, the browser still sends out interaction data by means of so called "pings", URL parameters, etc.
Like what do you even think, Mozilla people are sitting on top of all that sweet
PING www.mozilla.org (3.161.119.172) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from server-3-161-119-172.vie50.r.cloudfront.net (3.161.119.172): icmp_seq=1 ttl=248 time=4.06 ms
64 bytes from server-3-161-119-172.vie50.r.cloudfront.net (3.161.119.172): icmp_seq=2 ttl=248 time=4.16 ms
64 bytes from server-3-161-119-172.vie50.r.cloudfront.net (3.161.119.172): icmp_seq=3 ttl=248 time=3.64 ms
Regardless:
The browser asks me if I allow it to make these connections.
I tell it in unmistakable and irrevocable terms that I do not.
The browser makes these connections anyway.
The problem was never the connections or the contents of the data stream. You were aware of this before posting your comment, and yet you commented anyway. You are a troll.
1: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making...
The point is, don’t lie about saying you respect privacy with half-baked options and telemetry for me but not for thee bs. If I turn off telemetry, you aren’t allowed to send telemetry. Of any kind. Not a crash log. Not an install token. Not a call home to see if maybe possibly your on an airport wifi and make-our-app-work-edge-case()
When the setting labelled "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" is unchecked, the browser still sends out technical and interaction data through parameters added to various browser-provided/generated URLs (e.g. search results pages from built-in search providers, Firefox documentation links provided by the browser, DevTools compatibility panel links to MDN, etc.), by sending out pings when hovering over or clicking interactive browser-native interface elements, and in several other ways.
In summary: that setting is non-functional and should either be fixed, re-labelled, or removed entirely.
By your logic, realistically, Google invading my privacy isn't a particularly big deal since they know the value of the data they're harvesting and will guard it. And third party data brokers are actually just making my web experience more tailored and relevant, so I should let them have their way with me too. Everyone has a good reason to cram something into my business.
People might still object to diagnostic data and Firefox's handling of it, but it's disingenuous to state that they're the same.
They're both companies spying on people to improve their own products, ostensibly to the customers' benefit.
You have literally no logical or moral delimiter between how Firefox spies on me to improve Firefox and how Windows does it or how ad companies do it. I'm sure you'll move the goalpost now and strain yourself to come up with something ex post facto, let's hear it.
I don't see the difference. In one case you are trying to improve your product using stolen data (which presumably results in your user sat scores and/or userbase going up and you continuing to receive a paycheck, ie monetization), and in the other case you are just selling the stolen data directly.
In both cases you are taking private data without consent and using it to get money, or money-equivalent things (like a better product or more users).
Technically and philosophically there is absolutely no distinguishing feature between opt-out "telemetry" and spyware. Both are using private user activity information, exfiltrated silently and without affirmative consent.
Are countries with opt-out organ donation also evil? Doesn't the litany of saved lives worth more than a post-death "inconvenience"?
Yes, 100%. They should not exfiltrate data without consent. If the owner is fine with it, they can just ask! (I'll let you in on a secret: they don't ask because most users, when asked, do not want to be placed under surveillance!)
> Are countries with opt-out organ donation also evil? Doesn't the litany of saved lives worth more than a post-death "inconvenience"?
You don't need your organs when you are dead. You do need your privacy when you are alive.
> In both cases you are taking private data without consent and using it to get money, or money-equivalent things (like a better product or more users)
This is just word salad. Opting in is consent. You are absolutely free to opt out, by following the clear instructions on the website [0], and you can continue to use the software. Your rights are being deprived here.
Secondly, "money equivalent things" is a reductionist argument. Not everything fits neatly into a black and white "right" and "wrong" bucket, and arguing it does is forgetting about the fact that technology doesn't exist in a vacuum any more than any other product or industry.
> Technically and philosophically there is absolutely no distinguishing feature between opt-out "telemetry" and spyware.
Technically there's no difference between me sending any kind of data to a remote service. Using rote logic to infer behaviour is a fallacy, and when I read comments like this I end up (unfortunately) coming away thinking "this person has no critical thinking skills". I'm aware it's an ad-hominem, but logically there's no other explanation other than you can't possibly understand anything other than your narrow world view.
Telemetry is spyware if it's done without the active informed consent of the user. What the collected data is actually used for isn't relevant. Consent is the relevant factor.
So opt out of it. Calling it spyware is inflammatory, and disregards the reality of the world that we exist in.
> It's just marketing to make line go up and to the right while Mozilla staff can keep collecting paychecks for being "the good guys". There's a lot of money involved.
And makes you sound like a conspiricy theorist.
> They also ship closed source DRM in the browser which infringes on software freedoms.
If FF didn't have media support I would switch to chrome, immediately. This is speaking as someone who has dogmatically used Firefox for 15 years. Software, such as web browsers don't exist in a perfect world that I wish it did. Instead, we have DRM, we have telemetry. A userbase requires marketing, which requires money. I wish it didn't, but it does.
And they blog about all of this, from how the data is used to how you can see it for yourself to what efforts they make to ensure privacy while doing so.
To call it "hidden" is either deliberately ignorant or a lie, I'm not sure which.
https://blog.mozilla.org/data/tag/telemetry/
I thought it wasn't shipped with the browser but the browser asks if you want to download it when you first need it.
But calling it out like that is just scummy, as they don't do anything malicious. All of these are just basic business practices done by most software you have on your computer.
Mozilla gets a some heat from the tech community for their pretty reasonable business model. I’ve seen Firefox be accused of being just about as bad as Chrome when it comes to user privacy and product monetization.
To me that has always felt like a “both sides are the same” argument.
In other words, not all telemetry is created equal.
[0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-go...
Which makes one wonder if the existence of a competitor is a good measure of whether a monopoly exists. If a company is funding its main competitor, is it really a competitor?
Google has a stranglehold on the browser market.
Also, I really don't get all that fuss about some basic "telemetry", that word became way too overloaded. But the least I can do is like, share some basic data with this open-source project I freely use for many hours each day, e.g. in case of a crash.
Such as?