This is a link to a diff of Firefox where the FAQ are stored in a structured way. In the diff it can be seen that the question “Does Firefox sell your personal data?” has been removed:
{
"@type": "Question",
"name": "Does Firefox sell your personal data?",
"acceptedAnswer": {
"@type": "Answer",
"text": "Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from
many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed
to protect your privacy. That’s a promise. "
}
},
People in the comments are asking if the definition of the word “neven” has been changed or what’s going on.
Mozilla FakeSpot promises that the following “is Sold and/or Shared [with] Advertising partners”:
Instead of aligning FakeSpot (which they bought in 2023) with their pro-privacy stance, it seems they are realigning their stance with their actual activity.
Brownie points for being honest, I guess.
Damn, time to look for new browsers
Fakespot and Firefox are different products. They should stay that way.
It’s fine that Fakespot needs to collect some data from users to do the thing it does, and probably necessary for it to monetize that data to have a sustainable funding model. I don’t want it to sell a profile about me to advertising partners, so I don’t use it.
Firefox can function as a web browser without transferring any information about me off my local machine except that which I explicitly tell it to send to specific websites.
I swear that, at one point, the Mozilla websites said that every company under the MoCo banner would uphold the same ethical values as the Foundation, its parent, espoused. If that’s still the case, it seems Mozilla is still sort of upholding their consistency, but it’s eroding the base product.
Personally, I don’t see any reason to sell any of that data to advertisement corporations. Not browsing history, not physical location, not compiled profiles of its users! (Up until December 2024, Mozilla’s other in-house AI product, Orbit, also gave FakeSpot a shout-out for unknown reasons…)
You don’t see the reason? I see the reason. I just don’t like it.
I liked Mozilla better when it was a pure nonprofit narrowly focused on its core competency.