This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
They have no business collecting any data in the first place. If I wanted my data collected I'd be using Chrome like everyone else. I'm not choosing to use their buggy ass inferior and slower browser for any of Mozilla's services, I'm choosing it because I want to support non-Chromium browsers and regain my privacy.
There's no point whatsoever to using Firefox if it's just a worse Chrome.
Telemetry benefits everyone, knowing which features are getting used, knowing what parts are causing crashes... It lets developers target what to improve and fix instead of going in blind. I get that collecting data can be scary, because so far everyone has been busy selling that data. But there's a reason why data is so valuable, if it's properly handled and anonymized it benefits everyone using firefox.
No, fuck that and quit bootlicking. Software makers did just fine without telemetry for decades; your supposed justification is nothing but a bullshit lazy excuse.
Software makers did just fine without telemetry for decades
They actually did not, almost every software out there is mining your information. Software developers rely on and need data, you can't guess what people want. Whether it's from studies, testers, surveys, or telemetry, developers need information about what users like, what they don't, how they interact with the software... This is what makes data so valuable, and why businesses like Google can exist. Denying open source software telemetry is shooting yourself in the foot.
. Software developers rely on and need data, you can't guess what people want.
Why would I want software developers (particularly web browser) to guess what I want? I will tell them what I want, otherwise they have no business serving it to me.
If I'm not offering that data, it means I don't want you to have it. Simple as that.
It lets developers target what to improve and fix instead of going in blind.
I'm sure they'll make do
Ruh roh. Too late though.
Friendship ended with Firefox,❎ Librewolf is my new best friend. ✅
I've already moved most of my stuff to forks or different software altogether.
Firefox -> LibreWolf and Waterfox
Thunderbird -> Evolution
I'm still trying to decide if I want to move off k9mail on mobile to something else. I probably will but I'm not sure what at this point.
I thought Thunderbird was a separate entitiy from Mozilla these days? And K-9 isn't owned by Thunderbird either? Am I mistaken?
"I am doing things that are not selling your data which some people consider to be selling your data"
Why is he so cryptic? Neil, why don't you tell me what those things are and let me be the judge?
Louis Rossmann had a good video about this. Basically, California passed a law that changed what "selling your data" means, and it goes way beyond what I consider "selling your data." There's an argument here than Mozilla is largely just trying to comply with the law. Whether that's accurate remains to be seen though.
Then how about putting that in the language? "We don't sell your data, except if you're in California, because they consider x, y and z things we might actually do as selling data."
Some jurisdictions classify "sale" as broadly as "transfer of data to any other company, for a 'benefit' of any kind" Benefit could even be non-monetary in terms of money being transferred for the data, it could be something as broadly as "the browser generally improving using that data and thus being more likely to generate revenue."
To avoid frivolous lawsuits, Mozilla had to update their terms to clarify this in order to keep up with newer laws.
I think this is a reasonable explanation.
But I also believe a large part of the firefox user base does not want any data about them collected by their browser, no matter if it is for commercial purposes or simply analytics / telemetry. Which is why the original statement "we will never sell any of your data" was just good enough for them, and anything mozilla is now saying is basically not good enough, no matter how much they clarify it to mean "not selling in the colloquial sense"
