Comment on Sokath, his browser’s eyes wide open

Corgana@startrek.website ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• isosphere@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’ve seen this sentiment, but I don’t think it’s credible. I don’t think we should normalize legalize that explicitly enables bullshit; it’s not like it couldn’t be written any other way. It’s written in English, though it has legal intent, and we have words and phrases to clarify such things.

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  • Corgana@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Perhaps if you gave an example from the TOS to illustrate what you mean by “enabling bullshit” your position would be more clear?

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    • isosphere@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Exhibit A: arstechnica.com/…/firefox-deletes-promise-to-neve…

      Exhibit B: www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/

      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.

      I don’t agree to this as written; and I am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt given Exhibit A. I think an argument could be made that selling my data to advertisers would help me “experience” and “interact” with online content. Perhaps it would be a difficult argument, perhaps not. I think skepticism is warranted.

      Firefox has struggled to find a profitable business model outside of Google paying to be the default search engine, and it looks like these changes are a pivot to address this. I don’t think it will be good for users.

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      • Corgana@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Well I do agree to it as written lol. I didn’t realize this was a matter of opinion.

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• grue@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  No, they’re not. No software company has ever needed legal cover for that and nothing changed in the legal landscape to create that need now. To pretend that there is such a need is to deliberately misrepresent the fundamental nature of what a product, such as software running locally on the user’s machine, actually is.

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  The only justification for having ToS is if Mozilla is transforming Firefox into a service that depends on communication with Mozilla’s servers themselves, which is absolutely not just “typing a URL into the URL bar!”

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  • essell@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I think their blog makes it clear that it isn’t them that’s changing

    Its that legal definitions are changing around them and they need to reflect that in their terms.

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    • grue@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      No, that’s what they claim, but it’s bullshit. Even the most “broad and evolving” definition of “sale of data” still entails Mozilla having the data at all in the first place, and that’s the bright red line they shouldn’t be crossing!

      If you want to get into the blog, here’s the relevant part:

      In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar.

      See that? That, right there: that’s the entirely fucking unacceptable part!

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    • Spawn7586@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      In a non-binding post they said that. In the ToS they say otherwise. “Here, sign this contract, I assure you it doesn’t do what it says” is how literal scams work. Laws aren’t changing anywhere, they are

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      • Corgana@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        you can skip the signature part (i signed it with a fake name cornelius flycatcher)

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