this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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Privacy

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TL;DR: Mozilla is now enforcing data collection as a pre-requisite to access new features in Firefox Labs. This is backed by the Terms of Use that Mozilla introduced a few months ago.

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[–] berber@feddit.org 56 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

look, i do agree with a lot of the criticism, but can we please stop with these weird headlines?

being spyware is independent from being open source. the software can be totally open source and spy on you, and closed source software can be completely privacy respecting.

[–] infeeeee@lemmy.zip 25 points 2 weeks ago

It's just the regular monthly anti firefox FUD.

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 34 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

What are firefox labs...?

If it's experimental features there is actually an argument that telemetry might be the a big point of them offering those features in the first place.

I think locking it sucks, they could still get valuable feedback from community discussion without telemetry, but I'm guessing those features being there for testing and experimentation and therefor needing telemetry to evaluate them is the reasoning for the choice... :/

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

deleted by creator

[–] als@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)
[–] Weslee@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Been using LibreWolf since the tos changes a few months ago, barely notice a difference

Libre wolf has been great. On the rare chance I need ungoogled chromium, it’s because it’s a terribly done site I’m forced to visit.

[–] cardfire@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago

For want of a $100 per year Apple developer license fee, LibreWolf doesn't work on Silicon Macs still, so I am forced to use WaterFox and a few other off-brand Mozilla flavors.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is part of a significant Overton window shift.

In 2017, Mozilla fans criticized the addition of data collection by default.

Then we slowly slid towards acceptance of data collection by default, with people saying "stop complaining, you can turn it off manually."

Now it's 2025, and you can't use some features of Firefox unless you opt in to data collection.

[–] MysteriousSophon21@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

This is so true. I've been watching this shift happen across the entire tech landscape for years. What was once "we'd never collect your data" became "we collect anonymized data" became "you can opt out" and now "you must opt in for features." Its the classic boiling frog scenario and Mozilla was supposed to be different.