On Wednesday, Mozilla introduced legal updates to users of Firefox, and something feels off. I read, and re-read the new Terms of Use and while much of it reads like standard boilerplate from any tech company, there’s a new section that is unexpected:
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.
The community has also zeroed in on this phrase, with contributors asking directly what up with that?
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Ultimately, Microsoft specifically disclaims ownership of your content – something Mozilla does not do.
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.
We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.
Then why didn’t it say that or specifically limit how they can use the content?
In addition to the Terms of Use, we are providing a more detailed explanation of our data practices in our updated Privacy Notice.
This is the same thing Adobe did. It’s not great to put the key information in what is essentially a FAQ that doesn’t seem as legally binding as a ToS. And the clarification says that they can only use the data as described in the Privacy Notice, while the actual Terms of Service say that that Mozilla gets “all rights necessary” including using it as described in the Privacy Notice. So it seems like the Privacy Notice cannot constrain their behavior, but they want us to think it does.
This situation reveals a recurring issue in how Mozilla communicates with its user base. I believe this represents a fundamental disconnect in communication strategy. Internally at Mozilla, I’m certain there were extensive discussions, agreements, disagreements, and careful consideration about how to phrase and present these changes. The team likely developed a clear understanding of the what, where, and why behind these policy updates.
However, when it came time to present this information to users, Mozilla seems to have forgotten that we—the external community—were not privy to those internal discussions. Critical context, nuance, and rationale that informed their decision-making process were missing from the initial announcement. What may have seemed perfectly clear to those inside Mozilla appeared ambiguous and concerning to those of us on the outside.
David Gerard (via Dave Rahardja, Hacker News):
New Mozilla TOS diff. This is what they just removed:
* Does Firefox sell your personal data?
Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.
The purpose of the new TOS appears to be to enable them to do this – such as for their advertising and AI sidelines.
There are only two business models on the web – either you pay with your data/attention or you pay with your wallet.
Previously:
