this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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[–] elbucho@lemmy.world 71 points 3 weeks ago (22 children)

As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”

Yes. That is selling. If you exchange customer data for money or other valuables, that is the definition of "selling".

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 62 points 3 weeks ago (21 children)

Not in all cases.

As an example, Firefox has the option of sponsored results, which send anonymized technical data when a link is clicked, essentially just saying "hey, this got an ad click, add it to the total." It doesn't send info about you, your identity, or your other browsing habits.

This counts as a "sale" even though no actual identifying information about you was exchanged. They mention this in the paragraphs I attached, when they talk about data sent via OHTTP.

I don't think any reasonable person would consider a packet being sent saying "some unknown user, somewhere in the world clicked your sponsored post" as "selling your personal information", but that's how the CCPA could be used to classify it, so to avoid getting in legal trouble, Firefox can't technically say that they "never sell your data", even if that's the extent of it.

[–] jve@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Which is convenient, because now when they decide they do want to sell your data, it’s fine because their privacy policy doesn’t say it anymore!

Man. I want to root for Mozilla, but they are definitely looking down the barrel of enshittification.

[–] sear@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Should they just get sued instead? What's the alternative?
Anyway if they turn bad, nothing prevents them from removing this verbage from the project, so having it now doesn't future proof it.

[–] jve@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

IANAL, but idk, maybe explain some of this in the privacy policy?

nothing prevents them from removing this verbage from the project

Yes. They have demonstrated this much.

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