Comment by userbinator
1 year ago
The other WTF is here:
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.
> It's against the Terms of Use to use Firefox to... watch porn?
Firefox isn't a Mozilla service. The Mozilla services are things like account sync, or the review tool they use.
So only bookmarks of porn sites if you have Sync active, sending porn tabs to a Firefox instance on another device, browsing porn while on the Mozilla VPN, or using Firefox Relay to sign up to a porn website with an anonymous email address
Fine by me since I don't use a Mozilla account, but sounds to me like I shouldn't get a Mozilla account either
Bookmarks and tab URLs don’t contain porn, generally? References are not typically considered explicit, though certainly their language isn’t clear enough about that.
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.
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I think Mozilla VPN is a Mozilla service?
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)
look, i'd have similar clauses if I ran such a service. Porn gets very messy very quickly. Revenge porn, porn of generally unconsenting parties etc. are all to common and people who share know it is wrong and so try to use things like vpns to hide. The problem for you as a vpn provider is proving they're doing the wrong thing with your service, so it is much easier to simply say there is a blanket ban and then selectivly enforce.
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.
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All of that should be covered by not allowing illegal content ?
"If you're doing it you have to give us the data, and btw you can't do it either"
> Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy
The fact that Firefox isn't a "Mozilla Service" seems irrelevant.
> Firefox isn't a Mozilla service.
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).
Then they shouldn't explicitly say “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.”
And yet these terms of service—for Firefox—specifically apply the AUP to “your use of Firefox,” no?
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.
The French translation of the Terms of Use says they apply both to services and products:
> Vous ne pouvez pas utiliser les services et produits de Mozilla dans les buts suivants :
It's against ToS to watch R rated movies.
Its against the ToS to watch most PG rated movies. It objects to graphic depictions of violence as well, and has no exception for brief graphic depictions of sexuality.
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But python-rated movies are ok I guess? :)
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with this new TOS, Firefox became Mozilla "service"
Mozilla VPN is a service Mozilla provides though. White-labelled Mullvad or not, it a contract between Mozilla and the user and therefore presumably covered by this terms of use.
I would say porn is probably in the top 3 if not number 1 use for VPNs
But it says "Your use of Firefox must follow [the terms of use for Mozilla services]"
So what about synced bookmarks?
I wouldn’t expect the bookmark to run afoul of this clause, since the bookmark isn’t the content. Now it’d be a curious case if the bookmark contained a base64-encoded pornographic image.
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And synced history.
If you're syncing a bookmark that is somehow illegal content, it would come to rest on their servers and they'd potentially be liable for it. (IIRC they encrypt everything at rest, so this is a speculative risk)
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Imagine using Mozilla Sync to ensure you have the same horse porn on your phone as your laptop out of spite.
Welp, they stopped being open source, then. From the OSD:
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.
AFAICT there is no restriction on the application itself: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/eula/
The terms are very clear that they apply to Firefox the application itself (but not the source code if you compile it from scratch)
> 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).
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They've had a different license on the binaries vs. the source code for a long time.
Mozilla's management and legal has always been amazing when it comes to unforced errors. These changes are actually pretty normal, but they're also worded more scarily by being more encompassing than they need to be. Mozilla has always sucked when it comes to communicating with the outside world.
A shooting match between AMD and Mozilla would be a good day to be a cobbler
actually the funniest HN comment i've read in years, bravo
It took me several minutes, but you're talking about foot guns - brilliant reference. :-)
They know how to send cake at least
We are under an attack by Puritanism that is quite astounding actually. And no one is doing anything. Everyone just keeps bending the knee.
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.
The squeeze on any content that religious people find 'yucky' is double-pronged in the US - encouraged both by governments and businesses. Paypal, Visa, Mastercard et al are given complete discretion over what transactions they can block, and they have already extensively used this to deprive legal NSFW platforms and creators of their income.
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.
I dont think the pressure from payment processors is because of puritanism, but rather payments in this space tend to come with a much higher % of fraud and chargebacks and they've decided it's not worth the risk.
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I don't think it's particularly driven by religion anymore. The new puritanism is as much left-wing as right, and often atheist.
"risk management" is not puritanism - sex work has a different/higher risk profile for PSPs (fraud, chargebacks, etc) and it's easier to say "no" than to come up with a new product to serve customers.
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!)
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The Puritans have been trying to ban porn here since the concept has existed, it's never stopped, and it's never going to stop. They're miserable and they want everyone else to be too. That's like most of their religion. Going to church, being ashamed of bodies, and judging people.
[flagged]
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Confused. What do Firefox's terms of service have to do with puritanism ? Have Firefox developers become puritanist or something ? That would be extremely surprising if true. Any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) to this ?
"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“
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It's gonna be a weird few years that's for sure. I'll leave it to the historians to decide when the actual tipping point was but the shift in the GOP from being run by Republicans with a few bones thrown to Conservatives every now and again when it's time to drum up votes to the show now being run by Conservatives is going to be the point between two political eras.
It's by far not the first time this has happened but it's kinda surreal to be alive for one.
I'd say it was the decline and fall of the Soviet block. Without the external pressure to remain competitive, the balance shifted from realism towards ideology.
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It's not any more surreal than the extreme shift in the other direction we had before. If anything, what you are experiencing now is just the expecte (over)correction to that.
wait till you unlock 1984 esque reality they are beta testing on us rn
when you see slavery is still very alive im sure this will seem like just a playful moment
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I don't think that's the problem here, as I don't want to see porn on e.g. Mozilla's forums either. There's a place and time for that content and Mozilla shouldn't be the one to decide for others. The problem is whether Firefox is a Mozilla "service" or not, and the way the terms is linked implies that it is.
There's a huge difference between a public forum and cloud storage for e.g. your private bookmarks.
IIRC, terms like that have been in agreements for many years. It's boilerplate, almost.
I'm all down to write off contract law as "puritanism" but the rot is far deeper than an aesthetic (and frankly I'm unclear how puritanism applies to this situation at all).
EDIT: I'm not sure why porn is particularly interesting here when most internet activity seems to be potentially against terms of service.
My conspiracy theory is that gears are slowly turning to revamp the culture, redefine what’s acceptable/not acceptable and eventually suggest that if you won’t have kids you’re not accepted in the society. Basically a funky way to reverse the population decline, as the governments are realizing this problem won’t be fixed by free markets and etc.
People aren't having kids because of stagnant real wages and soaring home prices. In the US, the median home price is now $450k. In Canada, it's $650k. And when people do have children, they're on average having fewer, later in life (with a greater risk of complications): https://www.northwell.edu/news/the-latest/geriatric-pregnanc...
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...
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First of all, US population has been steadily growing, so I don't get why big business (whose interests current administration represent) would need to engage in long-term culture engineering for steady supply of new workers.
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.
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It seems like not so much a conspiracy theory as something totally transparent and out in the open. There's a huge political push to birth as many babies as possible. Major political parties have it as part of their platform. Their spokespeople talk derisively of "childless cat ladies" and how you're not a real contributor to society unless you produce babies.
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.
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"We"? Do we live in the same first world where people fuck like animals and promiscuity is the overwhelming norm?
> Either their legal team made a mistake, in which case they should correct it and issue an apology ASAP
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.
- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
I think Baker is now gone gone.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...
The damage to Mozilla she wrought is immeasurable. It'll be talked about for decades as a lesson in an organization losing its way by ceding power to the wrong individual(s).
That doesn't guarantee that the new leadership will be any better. A good first step would be cutting down leadership compensation to sane levels.
> 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[
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.
Is bookmark sync, say, a “Mozilla service”?
Yes
I'm pretty sure this is about Mozilla services. AFAICT, Firefox itself is licensed under the https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Public_License and as such doesn't put any restrictions on how you use the software.
That is what I expected to see, but the title of the page is "Firefox Terms of Use"
I think its a good argument for using a Firefox fork.
A bit of an issue is that the Firefox terms of use page [1] says "Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy", and the Acceptable Use Policy link points to their Acceptable Use Policy page regarding Mozilla services [2].
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/
That's the Firefox source code though, not necessarily the Firefox binary. A Visual Studio Code situation, basically.
I don't think they use a separate EULA for the binaries. I've found this:
> 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).
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/eula/
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> I recommend switching to an alternative browser which is only a browser, like Dillo, Ladybird, or Netsurf.
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.?
Firefox was the last bastion of freedom on the internet and the replacements aren't ready.
> 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.
If you're on macOS, then Kagi's Orion seems good:
https://kagi.com/orion
It's been working fine for me anyway.
They are working on Orion for Linux this year as well
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interesting they have resources to build a browser. also interesting (and sad) they focus on Apple and not Windows. Hopefull, they'll port it to Windows and Linux.
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None of these three are currently suitable for casual browsing unfortunately.
Dillo is only sporadically developed. They even lost control of the dillo.org domain a long time ago, which pretty much spells amateur hour.
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.
> Dillo is only sporadically developed.
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
?
There are also Firefox forks such as WaterFox, LibreWolf and Floorp.
These seem like a more direct migration path for someone wanting to move off of Firefox.
I'm using LibreWolf for a few days. Only annoyance I've found is zooming in on a site(HN) does not stick. I'm pretty sure I don't have to zoom all the time on Firefox or Chrome.
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The applicable laws of North-Korea might differ than the applicable laws of Russia which may differ from the law of Qatar, etc. It might be even impossible to uphold this world wide even if you tried.
So i guess it's more a 'we at Mozilla don't want any trouble' thing.
I hate to say this but I am again surprised not by the ToS update from Mozilla but by the people who are surprised that Firefox or Mozilla is doing this.
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.
They're basically saying you can't use Mozilla VPN to get around state age restrictions for access to adult content.
Gives them an out to claim it's already not permitted on their platform and that they're not enabling crime in these states.
No they are not. They are saying exactly: "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"
By the wording here there are many Netflix shows you could not watch using Firefox.
Why would you want to watch TV in your browser in the first place?
Firefox-the-browser isn't a service, it's a product. Their services are things like profile syncing. It makes sense to me that they wouldn't want content on their servers that they could get in legal trouble for hosting.
Comments such as yours are missing the point.
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.
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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.
How do you square this with the following:
> 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).
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/eula/
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So, as someone else pointed out, saving bookmarks of porn and using their bookmarks sync service would be a problem.
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.
Legal trouble for sexuality and violence? I am sorry, in what jurisdiction are their servers? Iran or North Korea?
Porn bans get proposed in the US on a regular basis.
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If they're worried by what might be in the profile data they're syncing they should just make it e2e encrypted so they can't know what's in it
But they clearly want to collect and sell that data
I agree with you but I'm jumping ship because it is not worth it for me to stick with Mozilla.
these EULA agreements aren't worth any more than the paper they're written on
TOS has always been a mark of arbitrary service and ownership of all products. None of this is new or surprising.