The very little, basic telemetry Firefox collects can be easily disabled^1.
What alternative do you suggest to Mozilla? Reject the $500M and blowup everything they've worked so hard for decades to build? I feel like users having to click, at most, a whole 5 times to change their search engine (if they want) isn't that big of a sacrifice to have a major privacy-oriented, non-profit player in the tech sphere.

[+] Boring@lemmy.ml -6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Its more so the principle. Many people that download Firefox are doing so to escape google, and if they are not born as cyber security experts they may download Firefox and continue with no real improvement to their privacy.

Secondly, the main thing you should look for is where a company gets its funding. If Mozilla gets almost 100% of its funding through google.. How much do you really expect them to push back against the data collection of their userbase?

I rank Mozilla with the likes of ExpressVPN, NordVPN, etc. They preach privacy and security against surveillance.. But its just theatre to make money in specific demographics.

[–] DigitalJacobin@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

It is extremely simple and easy to change your search engine and disable telemetry in Firefox. I would agree if Mozilla showed any favoritism towards Google, but they don't. Maintaining and developing an entirely independent browser is not cheap.

I really hope you're not about to suggest Brave as an alternative when 100% of their funds come from a dying crypto scam, is for-profit, and is owned by a far-right, anti-gay reactionary. Not to mention that Brave's browser is entirely reliant on Chromium code from Google.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

[–] booty@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Many people that download Firefox are doing so to escape google, and if they are not born as cyber security experts they may download Firefox and continue with no real improvement to their privacy.

Uh, if they're already downloading an entire browser for the purpose of escaping google, they can also do the extremely minimal research required to learn how to actually get decent privacy from doing so. In fact, whoever told them about Firefox being better in this regard probably already explained this stuff to them

[–] Boring@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I personally think is disingenuous to recommend something to casual users who are used to solving problems with money.

But the issue here is it is usually Firefox advertising themselves to customers so that they can have a subset of those customers actually use google.

They market themselves as a "download and be private" which interests the casual user who hears about how invasive Facebook and google is online and is looking for a nontechnical fix. This small subset of users on Firefox are what funds Mozilla to use googles money to fund their hobbies.

Yes, people should educate themselves, but I personally think it's unethical for Mozilla to fund for-profit businesses that they control by exploiting this small, uninformed subset of their userbase and it makes it hard for me to trust them based on how they justify their means to an end.

And no, fuck brave, I'm for educating people on how the internet works and to educate themselves if they want privacy or security instead of trusting massive corporations.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mozilla's Firefox is essentially the only competitor to Google's Chrome. So to say that Mozilla is pro-google is kind of weird. Almost every other browser uses Chrome's engine, and thus is enforcing Google's view of the internet. Firefox and Safari are the only significant holdouts. (And Safari is obviously backed by one of the largest companies in the world, with its own reasons.)

[–] Boring@lemmy.ml -3 points 1 year ago

Yea, it does seem weird.. But money doesn't lie. Its very easy to search online how Mozilla has enough money to lay for all their weird projects.

They even cost cut their nonprofit products like Firefox and Thunderbird so they have more money to burn on other hobbies.

They're like a giant corporate MLM where users are encouraged to sell "privacy" to their friends and the profits syphon up to Mozilla where they cash out to google.