this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Well, Firefox tries really hard to go to shit as well with their new Privacy Policy and their first ever Terms of Service.
Genuine question - isn’t their terms basically “if you use these third party services you’re subject to their terms, and also were going to collect some data to see if people actually use this feature or if it’s a waste of time?”
The Privacy Policy for a long time has been that they use your data for marketing. I'm honestly completely confused why people are always recommending it.
LLM usage is a part of it, but it’s not the only thing. They are moving more and more in a direction that they use your usage data for marketing I feel.
For example search suggestions, where they started tracking in which location you are searching for what and tell that third party advertisers, so that they can show you ads depending on your information. Additionally they also state very clear that they will handle personal information and location data and give that to third parties if you use advanced search.
Another example is the “new tab” in which they show ads and sponsored content and track how you interact with that for showing you better ads.
There are a lot of other features which will track behavior or usage, but you have to actively use them.
Then there is the debate about the “you grant us non exclusive, worldwide” rights to use your uploaded and typed in data discussion. Yes, they need to have rights to handle my data I input, but together with the ads stuff this smells fishy. Maybe more so because this is the first ever Terms of Use and all of that has been working without that in the past.
In the meantime they set usage reports and studies active per default. You can disable it, but you have to know about that option.
All of that is far from other browsers like Chrome and Edge but they seem to slowly change in a more ads-driven way. Firefox was basically surviving on google money the last decade, and that may stop, so we have to be extra careful.
Yup. But FUD must be pumped out.
For anybody unaware, their new privacy notice essentially states that if you opt in to using a third party LLM within Firefox, the LLM provider will get the info that you give to the LLM.
Thanks for the eli5