[-] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

Compare to what Mozilla shows their users in a pop-up tab after the update:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/130.0/whatsnew/

Isn't it strange that it doesn't mention anything from the release notes on this page?

The only thing it does mention, Close Duplicate Tabs, isn't mentioned on the release notes.

86
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Now that Google and Microsoft each consume more power than some fairly big countries, maybe it's time for 2024 Mozilla to take heed of 2021 Mozilla's warnings.

119
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

There seems to be minimal information about this online, so I'm leaving this here so cooler heads can prevail in discussion.

Link to filing: https://archive.org/details/jyjfub

Notable portions:

Teixeira was hired as Chief Product Officer and was in line to become CEO.

Mr. Teixeira became Chief Product Officer (“CPO”) of Mozilla in August, 2022. During the hiring process, Mr. Teixeira had conversations with executive recruiting firm, Russell Reynolds Associates, that one of Mozilla Corporation’s hiring criteria for the CPO role was an executive that could succeed Mitchell Baker as CEO.

Also, shortly after being hired, Mr. Teixeira had conversations with Ms. Baker about being positioned as her successor.

After taking medical leave to deal with cancer, Mozilla swiftly moved to replace CEO Mitchell Baker with someone else.

Shortly before Mr. Teixeira returned from leave, Mozilla board member Laura Chambers was appointed Interim CEO of Mozilla and Ms. Baker was removed as CEO and became Executive Chair of the Board of Directors.

After returning, Teixeira was ordered to lay off 50 preselected employees, and he objected due to Mozilla not needing to cut them and their disproportionate minority status.

In a meeting with Human Resources Business Partner Joni Cassidy, Mr. Teixeira discussed his concern that people from groups underrepresented in technology, like female leaders and persons of color, were disproportionately impacted by the layoff.

... Ms. Chehak verbally reprimanded Mr. Teixeira, accusing him of violating [a] non-existent “onboarding plan” and threatening to place Mr. Teixeira back on medical leave if he did not execute the layoffs as instructed.

Mozilla's lack of inclusivity was a known problem

In February 2022, Mozilla commissioned the firm of Tiangay Kemokai Law, P.C. to assess its performance in providing a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace culture.

The report delivered in 2023 from Tiangay Kemokai Law, P.C. states in part: “MoCo falls into the Cultural Incapacity category based on leadership’s inadequate response to the needs of a diverse culture or else the need to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture, which is reflected in current systems, processes and procedures, policies and practices, or the lack thereof, and are incongruent with MoCo’s stated values and goals.”

Steve Teixeira has been put on leave.

On May 23, 2024, Mozilla placed Mr. Teixeira on administrative leave.

Mr. Teixeira requested a reason for being placed on administrative leave.

Mozilla did not provide Mr. Teixeira with a reason why he was placed on administrative leave.

Mozilla cut off Mr. Teixeira’s access to email, Slack messaging, and other Mozilla systems.

Mozilla instructed employees not to communicate with Mr. Teixeira about work-related matters.

Upon information and belief, an investigation into Mr. Teixeira’s allegations was finally conducted in late May 2024, but Mozilla did not do so under its internal policies and procedures regarding managing complaints of discrimination. Mr. Teixeira was not contacted to participate in the investigation into his complaint of unlawful treatment.

Coverage online so far

~~I say "alleged" because there appears to be no consensus on the veracity of this document.~~

Update: this appears to be confirmed.

This has received no "news" coverage besides one angry loudmouth (Bryan Lunduke) whose entire commentary career has been shaped by his political beliefs, regardless of truth.

56
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

I recently downloaded Firefox Nightly and noticed some new settings that were enabled by default:

  • Suggestions from Firefox Nightly
    Get suggestions from the web related to your search
  • Suggestions from sponsors
    Support Firefox Nightly with occasional sponsored suggestions

Learn more about Firefox Suggest

The link in the UI doesn't mention sponsorships anywhere. But this page does:

Who are Mozilla’s partners for sponsored suggestions?

We partner with organizations to serve up some of these suggestion types... For sponsored results, we primarily work with adMarketplace, while also providing non-sponsored results from Wikipedia.

This page links to the adMarketplace Privacy Policy which makes it pretty clear this company is okay with collecting your IP address and passing it to further unnamed entities.

Elsewhere, they say Firefox sends them "the number of times Firefox suggests or displays specific content and your clicks on that content, as well as basic data about your interactions with Firefox Suggest", and then will share interaction information "in an aggregate manner with our partners".


Update: Switched the link from the Desktop to the Mobile version. Added more quotes from FF, and bolded info about their one named AdTech partner.

[-] [email protected] 95 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Considering this is straight from a VPN provider, take this with a boulder-sized grain of salt.

And I say that as someone who believes using a VPN is generally more beneficial than not. And espouses most of that advice regarding the VPN.

Even if a VPN were totally benevolent and gave daily tours of its office, there's still no 100% guarantee their claims can be verified at all times. So there's always an element of trust. (I trust most of the ones outside of the Eyes countries more than my home ISP, though. )

[-] [email protected] 113 points 7 months ago

There's no reason to hate Brave unless you have a political bias against their CEO.

Besides in 2016, when Brave promised to remove banner ads from websites and replace them with their own, basically trying to extract money directly from websites without the consent of their owners

And when the CEO unilaterally added a fringe, pay-to-win Wikipedia clone into the default search engine list.

And in 2018, Tom Scott and other creators noticed Brave was soliciting donations in their names without their knowledge or consent.

And in 2020, when Brave got caught injecting URLs with affiliate codes when users tried browsing to various websites.

Also in 2020, when they silently started injecting ads into their home page backgrounds, pocketing the revenue. There was a lot of pushback: "the sponsored backgrounds give a bad first impression." Further requests were ignored (immediately closed)

And in 2022, when Brave floated the idea of further discouraging users from disabling sponsored messages.

And in 2023, when Brave got caught installing a paid VPN service on users' computers without their consent.

[-] [email protected] 114 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)
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deleted (www.google.com)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
[-] [email protected] 143 points 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)
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deleted (i.imgur.com)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Done in Boost.

[-] [email protected] 193 points 9 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)
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87
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Today, when I navigated to amazon.com on Firefox for Android, I received a jarring message that I could "try" a new service, Fakespot, on the app.

Fakespot is littered with privacy issues.

Among other things, FakeSpot/Mozilla was forced to admit:
"We sell and share your personal information"

Fakespot's privacy policy allows them to store and/or sell:

  • Your email address
  • Your IP address
  • "Protected chacteristics"
    ie gender, sexuality, race...
  • Data scraped from across the web
  • Account IDs
  • Things you bought
    (This is sold to advertisers)
  • Things you considered buying
    (This is sold to advertisers)
  • Your precise location
    (This is sold to advertisers)
  • Inferences about you
    (This is sold to advertisers)

Right before Mozilla acquired them, Fakespot updated their privacy policy to allow transfer of private data to any company that acquired them. (Previous Privacy Policy here. Search "merge" in both.)

People donate to Mozilla because they believe in the company's stated goals. Why were the donations put into an acquisition of a company with this kind of privacy policy? And why has Mozilla focused on bundling it as bloat into their browser? Now that Brave is in hot water for becoming bloated, Mozilla should buck the trend, not follow it.

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deleted (lemm.ee)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Today, when I navigated to amazon.com on Firefox for Android, I received a jarring message that I could "try" a new service, Fakespot, on the app.

What's Fakespot? A "review-checking, scammer-spotting service for Firefox."

Among other things, FakeSpot/Mozilla was forced to admit:
"We sell and share your personal information"

Fakespot's privacy policy allows them to collect and sell:

  • Your email address
  • Your IP address
  • Account IDs
  • A list of things you purchased and considered purchasing
  • Your precise location (which will be sent to advertising partners)
  • Data about you publicly available on the web
  • Your curated profile (which will also be sent to advertising providers)

Right before Mozilla acquired them, Fakespot updated their privacy policy to allow transfer of private data to any company that acquired them. (Previous Privacy Policy here. Search "merge" in both.)

Who asked for this? Who demanded integration into Firefox, since it was already a (relatively unpopular) browser extension people could have used instead?

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LWD

joined 10 months ago