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THE END OF THE FREE WEB?

2025-03-05
If you're a Firefox user, you've probably already heard about the recent update to its privacy policy and the new terms of service. Announced on their blog over the last few days, these changes have sparked considerable frustration, disappointment and concerns about the browser's future among users.

While most of these new policies are just the usual corporate jargon full of legalese statements, some of them seem to introduce specific terms that could allow third parties to access our data, thereby jeopardizing one of Firefox's core tenets: the privacy of its users. In this article, we'll examine them in detail to better understand what is currently happening inside Mozilla and what kind of countermeasures longtime Firefox users can adopt to avoid all of this.

The New ToS §

Taking a look at the these new terms of service, we quickly stumble upon the following excerpt:
>
You Give Mozilla Certain Rights and Permissions

You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.
As I understand it, this means that by using Firefox you acknowledge that Mozilla-and other companies/individuals(this is the nonexclusive part)-can use the content you submit through Firefox without paying you(this is the royalty-free part) and, eventually, without even citing you. The last part of the statement clarifies that while Mozilla has the right to use your content, it's still yours; that is, the ownership of the data remains to the user.

Mozilla claims to use the collected data in accordance with its privacy policy(which can change in any moment, more on this later), but the wording indeed grants them broad rights to use the content, which makes me wonder whether this includes activities such as training machine learning models. This is definitely something that most Firefox users would likely reject.

A glance at their new privacy policy reveals that the data used to provide AI Chatbots is completely opt-in("if you choose to enable a chatbot") and therefore disabled by default. Moreover, they state that they don't have access to your conversation and that the only data they collect is analytics and technical information. This is indeed quite in contrast with what we've read so far in their new ToS.

Also, they even added the following part to their terms of service:
>
Mozilla Can Update These Terms

Every once in a while, Mozilla may decide to update these Terms. We will post the updated Terms online. We will take your continued use of Firefox as acceptance of such changes. We will post an effective date at the top of this page to make it clear when we made our most recent update.
Now, I understand that silently updating, removing and rewording privacy policies is becoming the norm for most modern online service available out there. However, I would never have expected something like this from an ethical company like Mozilla.

Last but not least, they even removed the "Does Firefox sell your personal data?" section from their FAQs page! This would be beyond hilarious if we weren't talking about the future of the only browser that still care about its users' privacy.

The aftermath §

Reactions[1], [2], [3] to this whole situation were unsurprisingly negative. Consequently, Mozilla published a new blog post to clarify and reassure its users. In this new official statement, we read the following sentence:
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Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data”)
What does this even mean?!? If you don't sell our data, why being so convoluted about it? Why remove the fundamental part of your FAQs if you truly care about your users' privacy?

To justify this, they "explained" that they merely "changed their language because some jurisdictions define 'sell' more broadly than most people would usually understand that word". Again, this sounds too awkward to me. The way I see it, it's nothing but a poorly executed attempt at damage control.

The future of the free web §

I've started using Firefox back in 2006, back then it was the flagship browsers: it was the fastest, the most secure and the one with most features[4]. Then, around 2012 or so, when Google Chrome emerged, promising to be the snappiest and most lightweight browser on the market, I decided to stay with Firefox because I valued my privacy more than better performance. Over the years, Firefox has objectively got worse and failed to keep pace with the improvements of other browsers, losing pretty much all of its userbase as a result.

Nowadays, Firefox is not the fastest browser out there, it doesn't have the smallest memory footprint, it doesn't offer the latest features available and it doesn't guarantee full compatibility with every website you visit. Still, these factors aren't enough to make me switch to Google Chrome, Brave or any other browser: privacy remains my top priority. Many others feel the same about this.

However, these new statements have created a very concerning situation where I no longer know if I can trust Mozilla. They claim not selling users' data, yet they removed that very sentence from their FAQs section. They say that user data is used solely for analytics and technical purposes, yet they reserve the right to use your data in a nonexclusive, royalty-free and worldwide manner. I think that if they still truly care about privacy, they shouldn't hide behind these opaque legal terms.

Alternatives §

The worst thing about this situation is that the alternatives aren't that good either. Excluding LadyBird, which for the time being remains just a mirage, if you want something different from Firefox, you pretty much have no choice but to pick one of the following alternatives:
  1. Brave;
  2. vanilla Chromium;
  3. LibreWolf.
Now, I don't know about you, but I personally don't like having my browser filled with crypto-related features, therefore Brave is not a viable option. I also don't like the idea of using a software managed by a company that suddenly removes the ability to install and use uBlock; therefore, as much as I would like to switch to the unbranded version of Google Chrome, Chromium isn't an option either.

Finally, we have LibreWolf: a privacy oriented, bullshit-free version of Firefox. That sounds amazing, doesn't it? Well, unfortunately, if you are currently questioning Mozilla's new policies, you shouldn't trust Librewolf's team either. This Codeberge profile is the only information I can currently find about the project leader. Who exactly are they and how can I trust them? As this user on HackerNews rightly points out, can I trust them with literally my entire digital life? I'm afraid the answer is no.

Conclusions §

According to Statcounter GlobalStats, Firefox currently has the 2.63% of browsers market share[5]. I would bet that more than the half of these users are people who prioritize privacy(and uBlock) among anything else. Turning your back on them will only make you lose the most loyal and devoted users you will ever have, that's for sure.

As Firefox continues to lose more and more of its users, I don't know how much longer this browser can continue to be a viable alternative to escape the privacy nightmare that the modern web is. If Firefox fails, the web will no longer be truly free. I hope that the people at Mozilla realize this.

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