Firefox isn't a Mozilla service. The Mozilla services are things like account sync, or the review tool they use.
Fine by me since I don't use a Mozilla account, but sounds to me like I shouldn't get a Mozilla account either
If you bookmark a collection of data: / blob: links then that would be the outlier scenario where you shouldn’t use any third-party server-involved bookmark syncing service, as presumably they’ll all either break or ban you once they find you using their bookmark table space for data storage.
Good point about Relay.
Do URL stubs of porn titles count as explicitly sexual? They can get pretty raunchy
Though, considering how few people are likely to care about the legal exposure risk of continuing to use Firefox Sync, I don’t imagine this will end up being particularly enforceable in practice.
Do you know any other?
It's pretty odd if you aren't allowed to use their VPN to watch or share porn
- send unsolicited communications (for example cold emailing an employer about a job) - Deceive or mislead (for example inviting your brother over for a surprise party under false pretenses) - Purchase legal controlled products (for example sending the pharmacy a refill for your Xanax) - Collect email addresses without permission (for example putting together a list of emails to contact public officials)
The upside for users in general is such a vpn service tends not to be associated with underbelly behaviour and so isn't blocked from 90% of the web.
Do alcohol companies get shut down when people drink and kill someone with their car?
Did you know that a nonzero percentage of child molesters wear Nike sneakers when they kidnap children? Why doesn't Nike actively try to prevent this?!
So why should a VPN provider need to explicitly dissuade its customers from breaking the law with their service? Why should a web browser be afraid of being on the hook when someone breaks the law via the web?
I have and continue to use my hammer, which is none but an Estwing, for demolition work. Often there are no nails directly involved and when there are, I use a prybar. I have also used it to open beers, 'fix' computers, as well as procure therapy to various things that plead for it. On several occasions I've even used it tied to a rope to throw over an unreachable tree limb.
That this may be used as evidence in court against me, well, has me almost welcoming a firing squad. What a silly silly planet.
Is there any hope for Midori?
A more appropriate comparison is a real-estate company which manages corporate offices, leasing out a corporate office space. That space is being offered under the proviso that NO brothel is opened there, underage or otherwise. Now, they won't ask you what you're doing and generally won't look but if there is a single complaint of you running an underage brothel, they look, and see any brothel activity, instead of wasting time they'll simply evict you and avoid the entire mess and waste of resources spent investigating. Easy.
The alternative is having to painstakingly prove the wrong thing was done, which is notoriously difficult, and ties up a lot of resources.
That's a bad idea, and a badly formed policy. The legal team and the marketing team need to talk things over here, a wee bit more.
They might clarify that in the agreement. I doubt many people are intimately familiar with Mozilla, Firefox, 'services', etc. to distinguish. I am and I didn't think of it in a brief reading (which is all I have time for).
The entire AUP is prefixed “You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to:”. There’s nothing in the AUP that doesn’t refer to “Mozilla’s services.” When the Firefox TOS explicitly includes this AUP, how could it make sense unless they think of Firefox as one of their services?
At the risk of restating the gp’s quote:
> Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.
I would say porn is probably in the top 3 if not number 1 use for VPNs
TomK32: You treacherous cowards! Is thy mind void of any knowledge or are you driven by a devil that you deny the existence of this programming language?
[Exit TomK32]
PS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_Programming_Langua...
The fact that Firefox isn't a "Mozilla Service" seems irrelevant.
> Vous ne pouvez pas utiliser les services et produits de Mozilla dans les buts suivants :
It's easy to laugh and dismiss that. But what if you're a journalist covering war? You're going to have plenty of bookmarks of graphic violence, and therefore run afoul of this license.
Mozilla's ToS applies for Firefox's use, and this is literally written by Mozilla themselves:
“Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy”
There's no distinction between the browser and Mozilla's online services here.
---
And even if it were referring only to features such as “profile syncing” (and it doesn't refer only to that), does this mean that people can't have bookmarks to porn? And why would Mozilla care about how people use profile syncing at all? I thought it was e2e encrypted.
> Mozilla software is made available to you under the terms of the Mozilla Public License 2, a free software license, which gives you the right to run the program for any purpose, to study how it works, to give copies to your friends and to modify it to meet your needs better. There is no separate End User License Agreement (EULA).
But they clearly want to collect and sell that data
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1hqqpbt/newest_ver...
Some of the things that are happening are just from the threat of “something bad might come down from the new administration”. It’s so ridiculous.
So, on one end, state governments are trying to strongarm NSFW services by imposing draconian requirements that ask users to submit their private data to some random opaque 'benevolent' third party business - and on the other, payment processors are using their legal right to refuse whatever transaction for any reason so they can starve them of income.
An enterprising PM at a PSP or fintech could look at the size of the sex industry, measure the risk of providing payment/banking services to sex workers and businesses and offer them at a premium like any other "niche" financial area.
And while we're on the topic of "draconian" regulations from the government - it's not outside their interest to limit the availability of obscene content from children. This isn't a "think of the children" argument so much as "children consume graphic pornography at huge rates and porn providers make money off them as consumers and producers with such inept guardrails that age verification has been a meme for 25 years." I don't think validating your identity with a government ID (and storing it forever) is a good countermeasure but I disagree its some kind of draconian limitation on free speech. If porn sites didn't buy and sell sex from kids and self regulated, this wouldn't be necessary (nb4 "it's the parent's problem" - good luck!)
Also: yes, building a government blackmail database is draconian.
Except on the largest of the sites which was successfully sued just a year and a half ago over it's years-long policy of looking the other way.
I'm no puritan, I'm just not an absolutist. The real world is complicated and I find arguments like yours annoying and naive.
First of all, not all NSFW transactions are created equal. A person subscribing to a website, a person buying a physical product, and a person paying an artist to draw what they want all have different risk profiles. (The former is far more likely to cancel). Does this change the opinion of Paypal, Visa, Mastercard et al? No, they blanket ban everything. They pressure businesses and platforms to stop selling this content and to cut out any of their NSFW creators, and the websites often have no other option. These big companies are the only available avenue for sending and receiving money.
Second of all... I think that being free to do legal transactions with whoever you want in exchange for anything you want should absolutely crush the payment processors' right to moderate their transactions in accordance to their own guidelines, rather than the law. Again, you have almost nowhere to run if these businesses turn you down - there is no digital cash. I think that companies that process transactions should be mandated to not discriminate between them, as long as it is lawful.
Lastly... The reason why this verification debate has been standing for 25 years is because it's not solvable. Every proposed scheme for reliable age verification that I've heard of either trades off your privacy, or isn't watertight (and might as well not be there). You can only have one. Given that private companies and governments love private data, and that we've had open internet for 30+ years now and nothing catastrophic has happened so far, I say we should let it be.
Like any physical addiction porn just feeds a part of you that only wants more and more and is never fulfilled. Watching porn is like eating junk food or doing cocaine. Next dose you need something stronger, or more novel.
I'm not puritan but I've recently become a practicing Orthodox Christian. I'm not being taught to be ashamed of my body, rather that my body is sacred and porn is tainting it which is true. Also judging people is a sin. I'm being taught to have compassion and help others not berate them and punish them for their sins.
Anyways, even non religious self help YouTube is teaching people today that porn is bad for you, it is right up there with doom scrolling and drugs in that it fucks with your dopaminergic system
That's literally every ideology.
Visa has the option to do business with whomever they like or dislike and I'm not even sure they don't support them because of religious reasons.
I'm not saying it should be banned but saying the people who are against it or don't want to do business with such entities are miserable is twisted given it is an industry where most of the actors are victims of abuse, the viewers learn a distorted view of sexuality and younger generations have less respect for each other because of it.
You are doing it right now!
This is not an argument. You can find sources saying anything you want on YouTube. If you want to be taken seriously, you need more than random videos or a Wikipedia article.
> A lot of scientists/psychologists say it's harmful
Sources? A lot of studies show it’s fine.
The argument is about moderate use, just like any other vice.
Yes. And no.
It depends on a lot of other things: what porn you're looking at [1]; what stage you are in; how fulfilled you are with your life; etc.
The addiction to porn is like any addiction: a symptom of something else not going well; addiction which you won't get out of if you don't find a way to fix the issue. That isn't to say that you shouldn't treat the symptom as well, if/when it hurts you too (and any addictive behaviour can quickly hurt).
The very tricky thing is that, the same thing (alcohol, sex, drugs, porn, sport, work, food) can be addictive to someone, and just recreational to another; beneficial and harmful.
The key is understanding why, for each and every one. Not to shame.
[1] porn is not necessarily the most extreme, garbage, inhuman stuff; although those are very liberally used by most porn websites. Some stuff are definitely harmful, to anyone, on either side of it. Some are well thought-out and promote educational, healthy, loving behaviour - guess why, those of most often written and produced by women.
Why does everything have to be about fulfillment and enrichment?
> ...Watching porn is like eating junk food or doing cocaine. Next dose you need something stronger, or more novel.
Did you similarly cancel all your streaming services? How is binge-watching a Netflix show different than binge-watching porn?
But sexuality is a big part of our lives and while wasting time on any addiction like doomscrolling and binge watching is not good for us, porn can taint our relationship with the opposite sex and that's worst in my opinion
Regarding judgement: https://chatgpt.com/share/67c393b3-5ad8-8009-9991-edbf43df1a...
Even if they did, forcing people through state violence to adhere to your lifestyle isn't very Christian of you.
EDIT: I'm not sure why porn is particularly interesting here when most internet activity seems to be potentially against terms of service.
It's by far not the first time this has happened but it's kinda surreal to be alive for one.
Not militarily, at least not the way the Soviets were competition.
If the US really is on the Roman path and transitioning from the republic to the empire, it's not clear Europe + China have enough force to keep MAD in place.
Europe + China have between 500-750 nuclear weapons usable on short notice. Depending on how well classified US missile defense programs work, it's possible for the US to only lose a single digit number of metropolitan areas.
Combine this with the fact that large, dense urban areas primarily contain the current administration's political opponents, and that may become acceptable losses.
A potential alliance between the US and Russia being on the table (or at least a non-aggression pact) further bring a non-MAD world order into the range of possibilities.
when you see slavery is still very alive im sure this will seem like just a playful moment
ever seen a reality where multiple people have access to all your accounts but no matter what you do your bank or anyone else can't seem to help
Second of all, majority of US population is urban. People in NY or Bay Area can't elect a president who represents their interests due to how Electoral College is designed but attempting to change their opinions on having children by banning porn is a pipe dream.
US population is growing for a combination of immigration and just slightly better birth rates than others. It's nowhere close to above-replacement levels (2.1). Just check out the population pyramid, and you can see there are less younger kids than older ones.
And almost all growth is immigration, the fertility rate hits new lows constantly.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/...
“U.S. Fertility Rate Drops to Another Historic Low”
I'm increasingly convinced that the goal is to balkanize the US and establish a Network State guided by silicon valley, as described by Curtis Yarvin
The problem has not been solved, and all western governments are hoping to delay the problem through immigration. This buys them time to see what solution Japan, SK and China can come up with, and copy that instead of taking risks with potentially abysmal results.
I doubt banning porn or abortion or engaging in cultural engineering will fix this.
And then there's this phenomenon, discussion of which was once verboten in goodthink circles (like HN) due to its anti-feminist and "incel" optics, but has since grown enough in strength and scale to shove its way through the Overton Window so that even respectable, MSM sources cover it: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo...
What you need to have a modern, western country instead of a dog-eat-dog wild west is welfare, including universal health care.
But welfare is considered as an evil communist plot in the US and the people who are led to believe that they are somehow above the working masses keep voting against their own interests. Not just in the US, unfortunately.
The best way to have more kids, unironically, is making everyone as poor as possible, removing any other method of entertainment, and making "having kids" the only choice. That's how it worked for the eternity, and some people want a percentage of people to go back to it, so it would support the current established system.
That's proably a non-insiginficant factor but unlikely to be the only one. Poorer people have never had problems reproducing in any society.
I think media exposure plays a much bigger part. Not porn exactly, but anything that glorifies a "free" lifestyle over settling down.
The "Birth" lobby is a stool composed of several legs:
1. Attack abortion
2. Attack contraception
3. Attack porn
4. Attack education
5. Attack "women in the workforce"
All of these things are seen as contributing to declining birth rates, so they're opposed by Big Birth. You can see the same politicians tend to go after these things in lock step.
There’s a very obvious “pro-religion” push going on across all social media as well, but it’s hard to pinpoint when/how it started. Not sure how far they’ll have to roll back women’s rights to get where they want to, but it’s incredibly sad to watch. Not sure how fathers with daughters are going to watch this happen in real time as well.
So i guess it's more a 'we at Mozilla don't want any trouble' thing.
Did not know any of those alternatives thanks for sharing.
After a quick online search, I see they could work for casual browsing and it's great that they don't rely on Chromium
But do you think these can be a full browser replacement without extension ecosystems like ublock origin et al.?
It's been working fine for me anyway.
> But do you think these can be a full browser replacement without extension ecosystems like ublock origin et al.?
I'm now actually trying to use qutebrowser as a replacement... it's not easy due to the lack of extensions, but mitigating factors are:
1. it has integrated adblock (though no cosmetic filtering) 2. there are userscripts to integrate with the Bitwarden CLI or a running instance of KeepassXC.
I don't think it is a mistake but more the translation of a vision and strategy that took hundreds of meetings to be laid down very precisely.
I have nothing to back what I am gonna say but I am wondering if their strategy might be to truly become the default browser of governments who are uncomfortable having Chrome or Edge as the default browser. Especially since now they get augmented by a lot of AI.
Firefox has it largest market share in Europe and Germany it seems and with the concerns with are hearing over there about Big tech I wouldn't be surprised at some point some govs try to make their workstations Firefox only.
Also some governments are trying hard to restrict access to porn, violence and social media for children but we know it is almost impossible to do it at the network level. So they might try at the browser level with the help of Mozilla and some "sanctioned Internet AI safety" inside the browser?
I really don't know but think about it, Mozilla is a dead man walking with it's 2% market share and huge cost of maintaining one of the most complex piece of software. They have to do something about it.
What just tipped me off is reading on Wikipedia [0]:
> On February 8, 2024, Mozilla announced that Baker would be stepping down as CEO to "focus on AI and internet safety"[2] as chair of the Mozilla Foundation.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...
I think its a good argument for using a Firefox fork.
> Mozilla software is made available to you under the terms of the Mozilla Public License 2, a free software license, which gives you the right to run the program for any purpose, to study how it works, to give copies to your friends and to modify it to meet your needs better. There is no separate End User License Agreement (EULA).
So either they're saying your use of Firefox, regardless of whether you want to use Mozilla services, must also follow the same acceptable use policy that your use of their services would, or it's a massively ambiguous way of saying your use of Firefox in combination with actual Mozilla services must comply with the policy.
If it's the former, their terms of use would be in conflict with the commonly understood definition of open source and free software licensing. If it's the latter, it's just poor legalese that fails to make its intent clear. (Interestingly, the Mozilla Public License does not seem to explicitly say that there are no restrictions regarding the use of the software for any particular purpose, although that is a commonly accepted part of the definition of free software and open source.)
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250228155328/https://www.mozil...
[2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
> Mozilla grants you a personal, non-exclusive license to install and use the “Executable Code" version of the Firefox web browser, which is the ready-to-run version of Firefox from an authorized source that you can open and use right away.
> These Terms only apply to the Executable Code version of Firefox
But not the source code if you compile it from scratch
> [Continuing previous quote], not the Firefox source code.
However the source code excludes DRM components, and while the terms don't mention it I believe also some API keys
> In order to play certain types of video, Firefox may download content decryption modules from third parties which may not be open source.
(It's not clear to me that these terms are currently in effect. Certainly I haven't been asked to agree to them yet).
However, the "acceptable use" clauses that OP complains about are not part of these ToST Rather they seem to apply to Mozilla "services", which are related to Firefox accounts (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/services/)
Side note: strangely, there is no link to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/ on the main legal site (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal).
Ladybird would be a better choice, but it's not even fully baked yet. Coming sometime in 2026, supposedly.
I'd recommend the Brave browser for people concerned about recent bad news from Mozilla.
These seem like a more direct migration path for someone wanting to move off Firefox.
I maintain it.
> They even lost control of the dillo.org domain a long time ago
New website is at: https://dillo-browser.github.io/
See https://dillo-browser.github.io/dillo.org.html and maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFJp8JDg8Yg or https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4100-resu...
> ... which pretty much spells amateur hour
?
So the text of the policy itself limits its scope to Mozilla Services.
But the purpose of that section is unclear to me. If it just means you have to comply with that policy when using features that use Mozilla services, why is that section necessary, since the license for the services should already apply.
If it is trying to mean that all the terms for Mozilla services also applies to any use of Firefox... that is really clumisily written, and also just generally terrible.
Gives them an out to claim it's already not permitted on their platform and that they're not enabling crime in these states.
May be I am way too cynical than average people. What is being stated here is actually inline of what they think is right. They think watching Porn is wrong. Which is why you shouldn't use Firefox to watch porn, or anything else they deemed wrong.
And that is speaking from someone who joined the Firefox 1.0 New York Times Ad.
I guess we will all have to do it again. This time for Ladybird.
Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.
Acceptable Use Policy links to https://www.mozilla.org/about/legal/acceptable-use/ which says "You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[...]Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence"
It's against the Terms of Use to use Firefox to... watch porn?
Either their legal team made a mistake, in which case they should correct it and issue an apology ASAP, or they really do intend to own you, in which case I recommend switching to an alternative browser which is only a browser, like Dillo, Ladybird, or Netsurf.