TL;DR: Mozilla is now enforcing data collection as a pre-requisite to access new features in Firefox Labs. This is backed by the Terms of Use that Mozilla introduced a few months ago.
TL;DR: Mozilla is now enforcing data collection as a pre-requisite to access new features in Firefox Labs. This is backed by the Terms of Use that Mozilla introduced a few months ago.
This is part of a significant Overton window shift.
In 2017, Mozilla fans criticized the addition of data collection by default.
Then we slowly slid towards acceptance of data collection by default, with people saying “stop complaining, you can turn it off manually.”
Now it’s 2025, and you can’t use some features of Firefox unless you opt in to data collection.
This is so true. I’ve been watching this shift happen across the entire tech landscape for years. What was once “we’d never collect your data” became “we collect anonymized data” became “you can opt out” and now “you must opt in for features.” Its the classic boiling frog scenario and Mozilla was supposed to be different.