LWD

joined 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Compare to what Mozilla shows their users in a pop-up tab after the update:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/130.0/whatsnew/

Isn't it strange that it doesn't mention anything from the release notes on this page?

The only thing it does mention, Close Duplicate Tabs, isn't mentioned on the release notes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I don't think it's anyone's fault for being confused or misinterpreting what's in the article, because even Mozilla calls it blocking:

And starting in 2024, all our users can look forward to Firefox blocking even more third party cookies.

The linked page is even more confusing, because it provides a link back to this page for clarification about which third party cookies are being blocked.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

So the update is, Firefox now blocks all third party cookies by default?

That's great and new news... I just wish this post reflected that, so I wouldn't have to dig through comments to figure out what changed between 2022 and today.

I was confused enough when they initially announced Total Cookie Protection in 2021 and then re-announced it as rolled out to all users in 2022.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I wasn't thinking about that one, although it is hilarious Mozilla thinks it can claim it isn't scraping private data by using a business collaborator as an intermediary.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's about their FakeSpot subsidiary.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Also not what I said.

Mozilla started selling private data to advertising companies in 2023.

Mozilla became an advertising company in June, 2024.

Isn't it curious that they've suddenly become much less outspoken about ad blocking after 2022?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (6 children)

You keep posting things that agree with me. I don't think you understand that.

The only way to find a contradiction is to find new articles that trumpet their ad blocking capabilities, not old ones from years ago.

Do you understand, years ago?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

404 media deserves your money IMO. They're former Vice Motherboard writers, so more of your money is going to journalism and not marketers

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

FWIW Floorp already has vertical tabs and is a more mature project, if that's worth considering.

Optionally enabling Sidebery has been enough for me), but I appreciate the competition.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

A "value"!

How very specific!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

If the Boeing Corporation started building "world peace" weapons silently into their commercial aircraft without telling anybody, I would question their commitment to world peace.

When Mozilla, an AdTech company, builds extra advertising data collection into Firefox, I question their commitment to privacy and not simply selling ads.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

Source: 2022

Hey look, years ago.

And your other page was 2018.

 

Now that Google and Microsoft each consume more power than some fairly big countries, maybe it's time for 2024 Mozilla to take heed of 2021 Mozilla's warnings.

 

There seems to be minimal information about this online, so I'm leaving this here so cooler heads can prevail in discussion.

Link to filing: https://archive.org/details/jyjfub

Notable portions:

Teixeira was hired as Chief Product Officer and was in line to become CEO.

Mr. Teixeira became Chief Product Officer (“CPO”) of Mozilla in August, 2022. During the hiring process, Mr. Teixeira had conversations with executive recruiting firm, Russell Reynolds Associates, that one of Mozilla Corporation’s hiring criteria for the CPO role was an executive that could succeed Mitchell Baker as CEO.

Also, shortly after being hired, Mr. Teixeira had conversations with Ms. Baker about being positioned as her successor.

After taking medical leave to deal with cancer, Mozilla swiftly moved to replace CEO Mitchell Baker with someone else.

Shortly before Mr. Teixeira returned from leave, Mozilla board member Laura Chambers was appointed Interim CEO of Mozilla and Ms. Baker was removed as CEO and became Executive Chair of the Board of Directors.

After returning, Teixeira was ordered to lay off 50 preselected employees, and he objected due to Mozilla not needing to cut them and their disproportionate minority status.

In a meeting with Human Resources Business Partner Joni Cassidy, Mr. Teixeira discussed his concern that people from groups underrepresented in technology, like female leaders and persons of color, were disproportionately impacted by the layoff.

... Ms. Chehak verbally reprimanded Mr. Teixeira, accusing him of violating [a] non-existent “onboarding plan” and threatening to place Mr. Teixeira back on medical leave if he did not execute the layoffs as instructed.

Mozilla's lack of inclusivity was a known problem

In February 2022, Mozilla commissioned the firm of Tiangay Kemokai Law, P.C. to assess its performance in providing a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace culture.

The report delivered in 2023 from Tiangay Kemokai Law, P.C. states in part: “MoCo falls into the Cultural Incapacity category based on leadership’s inadequate response to the needs of a diverse culture or else the need to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture, which is reflected in current systems, processes and procedures, policies and practices, or the lack thereof, and are incongruent with MoCo’s stated values and goals.”

Steve Teixeira has been put on leave.

On May 23, 2024, Mozilla placed Mr. Teixeira on administrative leave.

Mr. Teixeira requested a reason for being placed on administrative leave.

Mozilla did not provide Mr. Teixeira with a reason why he was placed on administrative leave.

Mozilla cut off Mr. Teixeira’s access to email, Slack messaging, and other Mozilla systems.

Mozilla instructed employees not to communicate with Mr. Teixeira about work-related matters.

Upon information and belief, an investigation into Mr. Teixeira’s allegations was finally conducted in late May 2024, but Mozilla did not do so under its internal policies and procedures regarding managing complaints of discrimination. Mr. Teixeira was not contacted to participate in the investigation into his complaint of unlawful treatment.

Coverage online so far

~~I say "alleged" because there appears to be no consensus on the veracity of this document.~~

Update: this appears to be confirmed.

This has received no "news" coverage besides one angry loudmouth (Bryan Lunduke) whose entire commentary career has been shaped by his political beliefs, regardless of truth.

 

I recently downloaded Firefox Nightly and noticed some new settings that were enabled by default:

  • Suggestions from Firefox Nightly
    Get suggestions from the web related to your search
  • Suggestions from sponsors
    Support Firefox Nightly with occasional sponsored suggestions

Learn more about Firefox Suggest

The link in the UI doesn't mention sponsorships anywhere. But this page does:

Who are Mozilla’s partners for sponsored suggestions?

We partner with organizations to serve up some of these suggestion types... For sponsored results, we primarily work with adMarketplace, while also providing non-sponsored results from Wikipedia.

This page links to the adMarketplace Privacy Policy which makes it pretty clear this company is okay with collecting your IP address and passing it to further unnamed entities.

Elsewhere, they say Firefox sends them "the number of times Firefox suggests or displays specific content and your clicks on that content, as well as basic data about your interactions with Firefox Suggest", and then will share interaction information "in an aggregate manner with our partners".


Update: Switched the link from the Desktop to the Mobile version. Added more quotes from FF, and bolded info about their one named AdTech partner.

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deleted (www.google.com)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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deleted (i.imgur.com)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Done in Boost.

 

Today, when I navigated to amazon.com on Firefox for Android, I received a jarring message that I could "try" a new service, Fakespot, on the app.

Fakespot is littered with privacy issues.

Among other things, FakeSpot/Mozilla was forced to admit:
"We sell and share your personal information"

Fakespot's privacy policy allows them to store and/or sell:

  • Your email address
  • Your IP address
  • "Protected chacteristics"
    ie gender, sexuality, race...
  • Data scraped from across the web
  • Account IDs
  • Things you bought
    (This is sold to advertisers)
  • Things you considered buying
    (This is sold to advertisers)
  • Your precise location
    (This is sold to advertisers)
  • Inferences about you
    (This is sold to advertisers)

Right before Mozilla acquired them, Fakespot updated their privacy policy to allow transfer of private data to any company that acquired them. (Previous Privacy Policy here. Search "merge" in both.)

People donate to Mozilla because they believe in the company's stated goals. Why were the donations put into an acquisition of a company with this kind of privacy policy? And why has Mozilla focused on bundling it as bloat into their browser? Now that Brave is in hot water for becoming bloated, Mozilla should buck the trend, not follow it.

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deleted (lemm.ee)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Today, when I navigated to amazon.com on Firefox for Android, I received a jarring message that I could "try" a new service, Fakespot, on the app.

What's Fakespot? A "review-checking, scammer-spotting service for Firefox."

Among other things, FakeSpot/Mozilla was forced to admit:
"We sell and share your personal information"

Fakespot's privacy policy allows them to collect and sell:

  • Your email address
  • Your IP address
  • Account IDs
  • A list of things you purchased and considered purchasing
  • Your precise location (which will be sent to advertising partners)
  • Data about you publicly available on the web
  • Your curated profile (which will also be sent to advertising providers)

Right before Mozilla acquired them, Fakespot updated their privacy policy to allow transfer of private data to any company that acquired them. (Previous Privacy Policy here. Search "merge" in both.)

Who asked for this? Who demanded integration into Firefox, since it was already a (relatively unpopular) browser extension people could have used instead?

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