[Bill Fitzgerald]

What a missed opportunity. As Bill Fitzgerald points out:

"Mozilla has given a masterclass, yet again, in how to erode trust among people who have loved your work."

Mozilla rolled out a new terms of service and privacy policy that rolled back a key promise never to sell user data. And then complained that people were making a big deal of it.

As Bill points out:

"Data brokers and adtech companies are weeds choking the internet. The data theft required to train large language models is a new, more noxious species of the same weed. Mozilla is going deep into AI and adtech, which means they are buying fertilizer for the weeds – and these changes to their terms, which provide Mozilla more rights to the data defining our online interactions and experience, should be understood in this context: Mozilla is building advertising and AI tools, and they need data to do this. Our web browser is right up there with our phone, car, and router with devices that provide a clear view on how we live."

Mozilla always had the potential to demonstrate what a tech company could be, and what the web could be, and it's always found new and interesting ways to fall short of that ideal. This is yet another one.

#Technology

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