Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises to not sell their data

Re:Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises... by lolinder on Sunday March 02, 2025 @09:15AM (#43230695)

As was extensively discussed yesterday [0], their argument about why they had to change the terms actually makes things worse. They try to pass it off as "California has a bad definition of selling" but the definition of selling that they try to throw under the bus is just... common sense. If they're not compliant with California's definition of selling data, then they're selling data by most people's intuitive definition of selling data.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612

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Re:Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises... by braiamp on Sunday March 02, 2025 @09:22AM (#43230774)

If I tell you "hey, I need to collect data from your system, and said data will be shared with everyone else publicly in our bug tracker", how would a legal scholar read that wrt California law? BTW, layman arguing about legal definitions are not conclusions in matter of law.

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Re:Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises... by rustc on Sunday March 02, 2025 @09:24AM (#43230781)

I would not expect any software to share PII collected from my system in a public bug tracker.

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Re:Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises... by bryan_w on Sunday March 02, 2025 @11:00AM (#43231746)

Does the law differentiate between pii data or is it just any data?

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Re:Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises... by rustc on Sunday March 02, 2025 @11:36AM (#43232147)

GDPR does, but I was only pointing out that this scenario, as presented by my parent comment, is not normal:

> "hey, I need to collect data from your system, and said data will be shared with everyone else publicly in our bug tracker"

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Re:Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises... by wtallis on Sunday March 02, 2025 @01:31PM (#43233414)

Mozilla isn't changing their terms of use because of anything relating to their bug tracker.

But to answer your irrelevant question, California law would probably not consider Mozilla putting user data on to Mozilla's public bug tracker to be a sale of user data because California's definition of "sale" requires Mozilla to be getting something of value in return, but Mozilla's public bug tracker is free for anyone to access.

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Re:Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises... by braiamp on Sunday March 02, 2025 @07:47PM (#43237069)

The value isn't financial. Making their product better can be used as a something valuable that the organization gains.

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Re:Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises... by lolinder on Monday March 03, 2025 @09:15AM (#43241926)

As you said above, random commenters on the internet don't get to interpret the law. Who is the recipient of the data and who is giving the consideration under your framework? The wider internet? Random people on Bugzilla?

Consideration is the word used, and it has a specific meaning which involves a contract between two parties. I'm not at all sure how that can be mapped onto "using the data to improve our own product", and you're just vaguely insinuating that it might without any evidence.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/consideration

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