Feddit.onlineMozilla Backs off on Data Collection: Firefox Labs to Not Require Telemetry or Studies in Future Updates
yoasifwww.quippd.com/writing/2025/06/18/mozilla-backs…
Starting in Firefox 138, Mozilla started gating Firefox Labs features behind data collection.
Mozilla had announced that some new Firefox features would be released via Firefox Labs.
It is now a few hours since I posted, and there is reason to celebrate – Mozilla is updating Firefox Labs to let people access features without needing to enable data collection.
14 Comments
Comments from other communities
lai, a supersonic warriornon-european firms are not to be trusted no more. they continously stomp on our privacy-rights.
sunglocto
マリウスEuropean companies and governments regrettably aren't better, they simply don't have that many eyes on them because, well, they don't have much to show for to begin with. Name a production-ready made-in-Europe browser/browser-engine. Name a widespread European messenger. A European smartphone platform? European Facebook or Twitter? Anything?
Even the few small scale European examples that you might come up with had an absurd amount of controversy to them. Remember that Tutanota thing? Remember Chat Control?
The reason people believe that Europe is so much more privacy respecting than the US is simply because there aren't many services to exercise the same level of invasive, authoritarian control over than in the US. If 60% of the world however would be using a Nokia minäPuhelin you would see the same, if not worse, privacy-invasive regulation and controversy popping off every other week.
If 60% of the world however would be using a Nokia minäPuhelin you would see the same, if not worse, privacy-invasive regulation and controversy popping off every other week.
Right... in fact if you look deep down within a TSMC chip you can see an ASML fueled IP on how to spy on people. /s
I think you are muddying the water with unrelated (albeit legitimates) problems (e.g. court order or political proposal vs actual regulation on all companies, EU ones included) and total speculation on what you imagine would happen if the world was different.
The Brussels effect make the world better even if the EU was not even well intentioned in the first place or didn't actually build anything.
You are right, I am speculating, as was the poster of the parent comment. I certainly didn't mean to muddy any waters, but you have to admit that there have been things going on within the EU, that paint a bit of a bleak picture of how the table might turn if the EU had greater influence/power (in terms of aforementioned platforms and software) on the global stage.
And while you're right that the examples I gave didn't become actual law just yet, it's certainly not due to the EUs benevolence that proposals didn't materialize, but instead very much like in Mozilla's case, that the outcry from people had them reconsider.
However, I believe there were proposals that were put into law even though the outcry was there. (eg. Article 13?)
CosmicTurtle0 [he/him]A gentle reminder that the Firefox Binary is no longer open source. It is source-available. You license the binary under their own proprietary Terms of Use, which explicitly grants Mozilla to use your data in a manner they seem fit to "operate Firefox".
They say they are using your data for research purposes but they also say they can modify the license at any time.
Still better than Chrome.
aceshighYes... I was going to comment that.
Sure I agree that Firefox, or Mozilla, is far from perfect. It should be better... but at the same time if we share not actually useful data, namely data to make the product better, NOT unrelated behavioral data to fuel ads, while alternatives (not to say competition) get both, then there is a problem.
I wonder if you will get excoriated for this opinion, since I had to respond to people in my last post with an update because people were adamant that Firefox was open source. 😼
There are two "Firefox"s:
- Firefox, the code base.
- Firefox, the compiled binary of that code base.
The codebase remains open source under the MPL while the binary explicitly, by Mozilla's own admission, is not. They are source available.
From the very brief skim I did of your post, it looks like we're on the same page. I had a few people who don't understand open source licenses come at me in my Lemmy replies when this was first unfolding. Ultimately it's on them to understand their agreements.
YerboutiI know everyone likes to bash ff, but it's still a great project.
It's still much better than chrome and most other mainstream browser and it works.
All the "better" options require serious effort to use. Sites will break, features you used will be removed, and so on.
The computer world is fracturing in a weird and annoying way
computer world is fracturing
May I interest you in a healthy does of https://splintercon.net/ ?
Agree about the fracturing. I've been using Librewolf for months and it's basially Firefox without the telemetry nonsense. Most sites work fine and it's not that hard to setup. Just import your bookmarks and your good to go.
Feel like Everytime it's brought up people mention missing features or broken sites. I've been meaning to try it but someone gets brought up every time. Stuff I usually like.
Like tabs across devices, does that work?
Am I misremembering, but it doesn't do updates right? Like you have to manually go get them? Which I'm likely to forget forever...
ZeroOneJesus christ the entire upper management needs to disappear. It's as if they're deliberately self-sabotaging Mozilla
Deleted by moderator
MinnesotaGoddamhow long does it take ublock updates to catch up?
Deleted by moderator
okay sorry sometimes my brain skips a few logical steps and expects people to make those. Ironfox has addons, right? And one of those is an adblocker? Is there a reason ublock (a popular adblocker) does not work? If not, how long does it take between updates of ironfox for ublock (or your adblocker of choice) to be properly functional again, as updates of main programs have a tendency to break mods/addons/whatever you want to call them?
emon@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA @elbarto777 ublock origin and inronfox do work on my phone with no extra step (Ironfox 139.0.4.1)
I've noticed a worrying trend among Firefox fans: too many of them supported this mandatory telemetry for on-device features.
They had never held this position before. Mozilla made a change, and too many fans simply adopted it uncritically.
Personally, I believe everyone should have internal ethical guidelines that aren't mandated by their favorite corporation. Mozilla's recent behavior has been particularly egregious because they push an ethical manifesto on their website and they promise every application they produce upholds them. Hopefully it should be clear to people that Mozilla's stated goals are good because they are good and not simply because they came from Mozilla. If Mozilla updates their principles to suck, then they'll suck. Ethics should not be treated like a religion.
But this blog post is good news. It demonstrates that criticism actually has merit, and that Mozilla can be coerced into rolling back bad changes.
I hope the Firefox fans who adopted Mozilla's silent stance just a couple days ago will rethink their positions and decide not to be so harsh when they see criticism of Mozilla.
Dear internet, I am confused. I don't know how to feel about this rollercoaster of events.
If you imagine that the referenced bug was present in the first place, then you'll end up at a pretty good place: slightly bummed that you can't both try out Labs features before they graduate and disable telemetry, but understanding that it's a technical limitation.
So in a few hours your post went all the way up the chain, the cost-benefit analysis changed, and the course was reversed? That's neat.
Or, of course, it was never an intentional evil plan that was "backed off" from... Perhaps it indeed was an artefact of how things evolved over time with an unfortunate side-effect, and we shouldn't be too quick to jump to the worst-faith interpretation of events.
Sorry, I'm just a bit tired of the reactionary pressure to be outraged about everything on social media. Even the non-VC-funded ones.
I'm just a bit tired of the reactionary pressure to be outraged about everything on social media.
Have you tried... I dunno... just skipping the posts you don't like? Others are clearly interested in this post and topic. You're not the social media judge who decides what's worthy of discussion. Just keep scrolling, friend.
That kinda works, but it's just that I've also been on the other side of this. Like, just now I read this, and it just makes me sad.
Me not jumping on the bandwagon doesn't make it better. But I'm hoping for a movement to dissuade others from doing so.
And also, I know the lure of being outraged about everything, and I'm sure that among everyone who thinks they are interested in it, there are plenty who would actually be better off not getting wound up about it. (But yes, that's probably not you.)
cloudlessSo in your opinion, how should the public have responded?
Either log a feature request in Mozilla Connect and otherwise not talk about it on social media, or if you talk about it on social media, start with a "hmm, I wonder why this" attitude, rather than a "Firefox is becoming spyware and no longer open source" one.
Deleted by author
I guess, but it's just so tiring to keep getting collectively outraged about every little thing. And sometimes it does have the opposite effect, i.e. it doesn't necessarily work.
(Although I don't think you could stir up an effective outrage campaign that would result in StartPage getting added, but I'll concede the larger point that Connect posts aren't automatically added to the TODO list.)
You seem to have a lot of trust in Mozilla. Do you realise that Firefox is developed and maintained by a for-profit corporation called Mozilla Corporation?
Yeah, quite a bit, especially compared to the rest of the industry. The reason is a) because that Corporation is owned by a non-profit, i.e. it has no shareholders that want to squeeze users for every penny, and b) there's a solid track record, and lots of passionate employees and contributors.
Add to that that the belief that the only thing that will come from Mozilla's demise, is even more power to Google, Microsoft and Apple, and yeah... I'm hesitant to immediately go for the worst-faith interpretations of every action. Unfortunately most of the Fediverse appears to think differently.
I have no idea what prompted them to shift their position - I just know that they shifted. Look at the release notes and the support pages if you disagree. There is clearly a change.
I agree that there's a change in that it's now publicly communicated that it's not an ideal end state to tie Labs to whether telemetry is enabled, but that might just as well have been the case in the first place - just not communicated publicly. (If that is indeed the case, then of course ideally that would have been explicit somewhere immediately, but alas.)
Hey, I knew things would be okay in the end. ☺️
Deleted by author
Must have been a misunderstanding. I merely said that it makes sense that you would want to collect usage data on potential new future features that are in development, to gather an understanding of what works and what doesn't. I didn't say that features should be arbitrarily gated. That would make no sense. 👍
Deleted by author
Well, that's an incorrect interpretation of what it says.
I make no mention of the word "gated" or any other synonym of that. Those are your words, and it's an incorrect extrapolation of what I'm saying. I make heavy use of words like "help", and I talk about it coming from our direction.
The help should be voluntary, I will concede, but I think it would be fine if it were opt-out. Maybe a lot of people won't notice an opt-in variant, so Mozilla would get a lot less usage data.
There's a big difference between supporting something "being gated" in and of itself, and supporting helping out an organization that has a very noble mission statement (as far as I understand it anyway). That's the way I see it. 👍
ByteMeFirefox, sly as a fox, chicken as a chicken
upsi, you caught us! :) :) ( :( )
-mozilla probably
Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤToo late, already switched to Waterfox.
So you still depend on the Mozilla team for your security, then.
For now. Þere aren't many options for Android þat don't. Waterfox supposedly disables much of the crap.
Now, on desktop, I'm using Luakit, so no Mozilla.
I þink you mixed ðose two symbols my friend. You are using ðe unvoiced symbol for ðe voiced consonants.
Þere aren’t many options for Android þat
Let's hope the odd characters aren't caused by a trojan!
Deleted by author
I'm using Waterfox only on Android, but the Extensions menu item opens a submenu with the list of enabled extensions and "Manage Extensions," the latter which takes you to a screen.
It looks the same as Firefox, as far as I can tell.
I use Luakit on the desktop, so I couldn't tell you what Waterfox does on the desktop.
Welp, there goes their consumer trust
Damned if they do, damned if they don't?
Damned if they do, cuz they did. Feel free to trust their pinky swear "we promise not to try to fuck you over again"
incidentally gatekeeping new features being A/B tested is hardly fucking anyone over. Let's save the rage for things that matter.
Advertising yourself as a good option for privacy then taking your data is fucking you over. And it was only two days ago that they tried forcing it, and they're already lowering the middle finger and apologising.
Let's try to not mislead people here by pointing to some a/b testing thing that has nothing to do with policy changes and enforcement
The Nimbus migration is literally why it was kept behind telemetry for a couple days, that's not a red-herring. You're attributing malice to neglect - which is now fixed.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-terms-of-use/
It is, just check their blog a bit back
It's not a couple of days, it is in place today. We need to wait until new code is developed to enable Labs for people who have telemetry or studies disabled.
What? Why is that?
Cuz they violated the trust of the community and their presented values of being open and private. They didn't go back on this because they're good people
no, it's quite reasonable actually:
You missed the part that this data collection requirement was a new development. Your quote is misleading
Mozilla seems to not be able to do anything good. No matter what decision they take, it will be perceived as a bad one by some vocal segment of the community.
Still using it, still enjoying it, not so flimsy and bothurt as many users are...