this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Apparently mozilla wants the right to get data from firefox users. But not like general information, they want to know what data you upload or download through firefox.

Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example.

What the fuck? I use firefox because I want privacy!!! Not sharing my information with a company.

We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. WHY DO YOU NEED MY DATA TO MAKE FIREFOX WORK???

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[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Even writing a post, you're entering data through Firefox into the post box. We just don't consider that data. It would be pretty quiet around here if you couldn't do that...

[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Are you even remotely aware how browsers work? Mozilla doesn't need to collect the information typed into your post box in order to serve the website.

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Maximum wrongness on your part.

This is the original text that everyone flipped out about (OP: "WHY DO YOU NEED MY DATA TO MAKE FIREFOX WORK???"):

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.

It has since been changed to:

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.

Use. When you input a url, that information is used to resolve an IP then fetch a webpage. You're granting a right to complete tasks you assign using information you input. They have permission to send your post content to a server, but they don't own that content. This should be very obvious in the revised text.

[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Just quoting the recent changes in their ToS doesn't prove your previous claim that was completely unrelated to this.

Mozilla doesn't need to collect your data in order to server pages in Firefox. Firefox operates on the client. Data collection is not necessary in order to server the decentralized web. It has never been. Like when I curl a webpage through the Linux terminal I automatically sell my soul to Linus Torvalds?

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 day ago

My original claim was that, in addition to gedaliyah's points, the TOS gives them permission to perform basic browser tasks. My last comment was about the same thing. The TOS is relevant because 1) it's the basis of this entire discussion and 2) the changes in the TOS conclusively prove my original claim.

As to "data collection" in this context, those words do not appear in the TOS and are not rights Mozilla is asserting for use of their software. It's a fiction you invented. That was the point of me pointing out the use of the word "use" -- describing that term and distinguishing its meaning from the thing you made up.