First post on my website... All right. Well, I'd rather that it not be sad news but unfortunately, it appears that the firefox people have decided to start using any data you push through the firefox browser in order to train their AI.
Now, you might be thinking, why would they do such a thing? Isn't Mozilla for the people? First of all, if you think Mozilla (or any for-profit company, for that matter) is on our side in modern day, you should really do some research on the companies that make the products you use. However, I've never thought of Mozilla as an "evil" company, but the thing is, the only reason Firefox exists is because google pays for it to exist so they don't get ruled a monopoly. Guess what happened in 2024? They got ruled a monopoly, so there's no point in paying Mozilla anymore.
Mozilla doesn't want to die, though. So, they've had a big change in their leadership recently to focus more on generating profits for the company. On paper, this is a good idea. In practice, for business, this is a good idea. For consumers, this is a horrible thing.
Why is this so bad? Well, would YOU pay to use a web browser? Or would you move to using a free one? Exactly, you would use the free one. Doesn't help that firefox is also FOSS software, and even if they tried closing it off, a fork would just keep it running anyway... probably. (Browser engine development is really, really hard. Thanks google for making something extremely overly complicated.) Mozilla needs money to survive, and the only way to do that is trend-chasing, stealing user data, or both.
Mozilla picked both.
I don't want to get more opinionated here than I already am, even though this entire website is FOR my opinions on things, but again I don't like focusing on sad/scary things, especially for a first post.
So, in order to wrap this up, what should you do?
If you don't care about your personal data being used to train AI, and there being "rules" on what you can or can't do with a "Free and Open Source" browser, don't do anything. If you DO care, switch to librewolf for now. It's basically hardened firefox with an emphasis on user privacy. They won't have any of the bullshit Firefox comes with. You can download Librewolf here or through your Linux distribution's package manager.
Librewolf IS Firefox-based, yes, but LadyBird browser (the only other browser engine besides chromium) is far too early in development for use. I personally will use librewolf for now and move to Ladybird if/when it becomes good enough for production use. Until then, I trust the LibreWolf devs to keep the bad parts of Firefox out and the nice parts in.
I personally feel that change can only come when enough people work together, but not making a big fuss about it. Companies won't listen to the fuss, they'll only notice when their profits are slipping for a long enough time.
Thank you for reading, and have a nice day. Next time I'll hopefully post something cute, not annoying or sad