Moved from Firefox Dev Edition to Librewolf. No deal breakers yet.
Procedure to transfer over painlessly: Install and run Librewolf. On both browsers go Help > More troubleshooting information > profile folder > Open. Close both browsers. Delete everything inside the librewolf profile. Copy everything from Firefox Dev profile directory into Librewolf profile directory. Run Librewolf with "--allow-downgrade" once. First run was a tad slow with extensions doing some 'recombobulation'. You can now run Librewolf normally without the above allow downgrade option. Enjoy.
per-site zoom and auto-dark detection disabled unless about:config > privacy.resistFingerprinting set to false
When I installed LibreWolf via the Microsoft App Store (to easy auto updates) it would not let me into a profile file. It would state a directory in the dialog. I would try to then manually go to the directory and it would not exist. I don’t know if that was a result of a sandbox AppStore design or what. Anyway, I uninstalled and am trying Zen out. So far, so good and it has vertical tabs like I used Sidebery for in FF.
set privacy.fingerprintingProtection.overrides='+AllTargets,-CSSPrefersColorScheme',
set privacy.fingerprintingProtection='true', and
set privacy.resistFingerprinting='false'.
As far as I know, privacy.resistFingerprinting and privacy.fingerprintingProtection behave the same with these overrides (minus enforced light mode), but I haven't found much documentation on this, so please let me know if they don't.
Dark mode will be remembered if cookies are remembered.
Resist blocks the website from knowing if your OS is light/dark so auto-dark/light, will be disabled unless resist is disabled.
As a long-time Louis fan it's sad to me he basically just complains even after leaving New York City. Also, when I met Louis IRL at one of his meetups he was actually super rude.
I finally watched a Louis Rossmann video because he covered a topic I know a lot about.
I was surprised by how much he got wrong. He was mixing rumors, speculations, and facts as if they were all the same. He ignored some documentation the company released to counter the news stories, which he couldn’t have missed if he did any research at all.
By the end it felt like I had watched someone repeat the most uncharitable and speculative takes on the subject that had been collected from social media, all while ignoring any actual research.
It was weird to have it all presented in his faux fair and balanced demeanor, as if he was doing the company a favor by presenting both sides.
I don’t know if he’s always been this way or if this is a recent audience capture thing where he panders to people who want to be angry about things.
> As a long-time Louis fan it's sad to me he basically just complains even after leaving New York City. Also, when I met Louis IRL at one of his meetups he was actually super rude.
I've always gone out of my way to make people feel welcome at meetups. From asking a little about what they do, how their day is going, what their dreams are in life. I don't just do this as meetups. I do this when people recognize me on the street, when people recognize me if I'm on a date. I even took five minutes out to talk to a viewer while I was taking my girlfriend for treatment after she had a stroke.
The only person I've ever had a negative reaction from at a publi
meetup in person was the stalker that followed my girlfriend across the country after I physically removed from the event.
He’s just a kvetcher. I wish that kind of content didn’t do so well on YouTube/reddit - he’s rewarded handsomely for being like this, so he has no incentive to change.
If you are a fan for other reasons than the complaining it might be a problem for you if all his content, over time, has turned into complaining.
Personally, I have never seen anything other than complaining from him, so I'm not sure why you would be a fan and also have a problem with the amount of complaining (which afaik has always been close to 100% of the content).
> If somebody wants to have a YouTube channel where they just complain, why is that a problem?
Because the complaining isn’t as fair and balanced as he presents it. He likes the stir the pot and he spreads misinformation along the way.
It’s a problem because he has a wide audience of people who adopt the anger that he puts out and accept it as ground truth. It’s a smaller scale version of people who get their opinions from people like Joe Rogan, who fill their time with misinformed rants.
Instead of throwing around generalized and unspecific claims, can you (without googling) point out specific cases where he spread misinformation? Without correction?
It's not that you can just install LibreWolf and forget about it forever. If everyone does this, Mozilla won't be able to monetize your data and they will fight back for their survival.
Someone needs to fund the actual browser development.. it's possible to avoid your data being used, but it only works because data of others is monetized.
As far as I know, Mozilla is funded primarily by Google. From their 2023 financial report[0]:
> Approximately 85% and 81% of Mozilla’s revenues from customers with contracts were derived from one customer for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, respectively.
Google is not named, but to my understanding the "one customer" refers to them. Their aggressive monetization strategies are neither effective nor work to retain what little users they have left. This money is also being spent on crap like executive bonuses and acquiring adtech firms, so no wonder people feel alienated.
For me, the best option would be to be able to donate to Firefox engineers directly, but not to Mozilla, they do too many things, I don't stand for those, just the Firefox browser...
Firefox Support Edition, for $10 a month you get nothing (or maybe some Sync stuff) but all the funds go to Firefox exclusively, and your copy will show a pretty star on startup or something else.
Patron Edition: for $20 a month, same thing but you also get the VPN from Mullvad.
160M users. If 10% subscribe, you get $160M every month. I'm a marketing genius.
>160M users. If 10% subscribe, you get $160M every month. I'm a marketing genius.
Can't tell whether you're serious or being sarcastic. A 10% conversion rate for a free product would be the most successful marketing campaign in history. Typical rates are in the low single digits, and that includes goods/services that people have no choice but to pay money for (eg. drop shipped goods from china or SaaS products).
Money is fungible. Every dollar you donate earmarked to "Firefox engineers" can theoretically be offset by the Mozilla foundation/corporation moving one dollar to something else. This eventually breaks down if the sums are large enough, but at the scales that individual donations can muster, it'll probably hold.
Right. Governments have used the same tricks with lotteries and bonds allocated to specific programs. People vote for these revenue generating methods to fund the programs, and the governments can then divert the money that was previously funding the programs into less popular sinkholes.
This. I’m starting to wonder if it could be possible to raise some funds and hire people to work on Firefox (and Firefox only). Maybe partner with the FF forks to help raise money? I don’t really know how that would work.
>Google is not named, but to my understanding the "one customer" refers to them. Their aggressive monetization strategies are neither effective nor work to retain what little users they have left. This money is also being spent on crap like executive bonuses and acquiring adtech firms, so no wonder people feel alienated.
What should they do instead? Their "Program" (ie. non-management) salaries alone are $200M+ per year. That's not something you can replace with a Patreon.
Judging by the features they have been adding into Firefox lately, I would guess that actually just maintaining and updating the browser doesnt cost anywhere to $200m per year.
They have something like 700 employees working on Firefox. To be honest, I have no idea what they do — take a look at the commit history and you’ll see that the core group of engine contributors is quite small — but $280,000 per employee including benefits, HR, office rent, and other overhead actually isn’t bad at all.
Someone needs to dismantle the system that clings onto a standard that requires $^6+/mo to implement. This is much more realistic than playing chase me game with someone who makes the rules.
They managed to convince everyone that a browser is naturally a hypercomplex app which requires so much maintenance, support and whatever. But in fact, a browser is an app mostly for rendering text, images and videos, and an embedded scripting language, which all wastes lots of memory and crawls on moderate loads. You can make an app like this in a month, solo, you just can’t fit it to the standard. Before web was a thing, people regularly made much more complex software that “web” heavily sucked compared to. This has to be done. No $200M/mo org can exist without naturally destructive interests in it. The lesson should be recognized, learned and never “feature update”d again. We learned everything we needed in these 30+ years, time to rip it out of corp hands, revisit, settle and put it into maintenance.
Add: to be clear, this is not a tech problem. It must be recognized and done at the antimonopoly level, crushed by the law.
I wonder if this could be a "money where your mouth is" thing for the EU.
If controlling a browser engine was considered strategic-- and for the love of the darkness, anything that gathers that much information and is owned by American techbros should be-- then they could provide a fair bit of a backstop to finance a dev team.
EU backing could also provide general street cred for the project-- it's both "financially resourced enough to not go poof" and "backed by an authority that both has a strong history of privacy protections, and is in a geopolitical scenario where they can't afford insecurity".
No body wants to pay say 20$ a month for what they can have for free. I suspect you'd need a few hundred million in annual revenue to actually fund a full browser that doesn't rely on existing engines.
I think the question here is around how much money is actually needed to develop the browser features that people want without everything else that Mozilla does. At minimum, people would presumably want security fixes, new browser features that get standardized that websites will expect to be able to be used, and probably some amount of support/bugfixes for issues that people run into that aren't vulnerabilities but still might be annoying. It seems like a substantial amount of work, but I don't have a good sense of exactly how much would be needed for that. My understanding is that Mozilla makes its money primarily from deals to make certain search engines enabled by default, and secondarily from donations (with "selling user data" being somewhat of an unknown right now given that they seem to be claiming that they _don't_ make money from it because they're not "selling" it under what most people would consider to be selling, but it's not clear whether that's because they're claiming that "anonymized user data" isn't actually "user data" or whether they're not "selling" it).
The key factor to me is whether that poorly specified extra stuff is actually necessary as part of funding the development or not. As far as I can tell, getting a search engine deal is actually not out of the question for one of these forks; Waterfox's documentation[0] indicates that it has a deal like this (with Bing, from what I can tell from trying it out yesterday), and presumably a large migration of users to a fork could lead to an increase in the funding in the future, in addition to any individual donations. I don't know whether this would result in enough money in the long run to be able to continue developing a browser indefinitely, but Mozilla also is doing other things than just developing Firefox and has costs associated with that, and I don't think there's any other obvious revenue source, so the two most likely scenarios are that they're either making money off of selling user data (or something derived from it that they're claiming isn't user data but aren't willing to bet on the law agreeing with them) or they're actually incurring costs from those other things that could otherwise be spent on Firefox. If it's the former, I think that being vague and quibbling over semantics has lost them the presumption of good faith, and I'd reluctantly conclude that having browser focused on user privacy is no longer tenable and we might as well just all switch to Chrom{e,ium}. If it's the latter, then focusing solely on the browser would _reduce_ the incentive to sell user data for funding, and the fact that Mozilla doesn't seem able or willing to do this means that we're all better of moving to an alternative.
True, but I'd accept less "features" per year considering very often Mozilla features were not bringing me a lot. A more open, stable, secure browser is all I need.
For sure, I'm guessing that's where most of us would happily choose to cut scope if it were up to us. Like the sibling comment mentions though, sometimes the pressure for more features comes from elsewhere in the web ecosystem, and as much as I don't feel like there's a strong need for the web to add a bunch of new features, I'd also rather have the features if websites are going to go forward with them regardless because the other browsers aren't slowing down. It's a balance, and it just makes the case more to clear to me that even doing the minimum to keep the browser working with whatever the web currently looks like is is more than enough along with stability and security to keep an organization busy without needing any additional projects.
I agree with your observations, but your comment gives the perfect context to understand why in my opinion, by rapidly expanding web standards, Google makes it harder for independent browsers to sustain themselves (deliberately or not - I don't know).
Web API surface is large, and if we see new features like:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43113790
and developers start using it, then websites start to "look worse" in Firefox (or work slower if polyfills are used).. then in order to keep up, Mozilla might feel pressured to expand their engineering team to implement things, and this is expensive..
> If everyone does this, Mozilla won't be able to monetize your data and they will fight back for their survival.
So the whole thing is kinda weird, because the new terms of use _do not_ give Mozilla any ability to monetize your data. All they do is state that if you give the browser some data the browser can use that data to follow your instructions.
For example, I am using Firefox right now as I type this message in. Firefox will save what I type in my profile so that if my power goes out (or Firefox crashes, which is rare these days but wasn’t always) then it can recover this text when it restarts. It’s always done this but apparently Mozilla’s lawyers now think that this requires an explicit mention in the terms of use. I disagree, frankly, and I think the lawyers who forced this issue are milking it.
Your statements do not align with the reality of Firefox’s own words. They are trading/selling your data and they updated their ToS to reflect that.
“ In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar”
But that has nothing to do with the new language that was added to the ToS, which states:
> You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.
This new license to the data that you enter into the browser is only for local operation of the browser itself, not for ads or sponsored suggestions. In addition to that license, they also use the words that you type into the urlbar or search box to customize the ads and search suggestions that you see. It is important to keep these two things separate, because only one of them is new. The other has been there for years.
Of course it does. It explicitly says that the license is for “operating Firefox” and “for the purpose of doing as you request”. Not for improving it, or serving you ads, or for understanding your usage. Just for Firefox to follow your instructions. You type in a url, and it navigates to the url for you and saves it in your history. You type in some form data, and it submits it for you and saves it for later.
> It explicitly says that the license is for “operating Firefox” and “for the purpose of doing as you request”. Not for improving it, or serving you ads, or for understanding your usage.
It does not. That is explicitly stated as a subset of their rights. Before that sentence you might notice:
“This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice.”
So check the privacy notice and you find…
“How we use data
We use data to keep Firefox running smoothly, improve features and help sustain our business”
So they can use the data in anyway that helps sustain the business.
Yes, their rights have 2 parts in their paragraph:
1. The data processed described in the Privacy Notice,
2. A nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox.
The 2nd is not the data they talk about in the 1st (a.k.a the Privacy Notice). The data they describe in the Privacy Notice in the 1st are not the data they have "nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license" in the 2nd. Don't mix 2 or these together.
Completely disagree with that interpretation of that language. Given the beginning sentence of “You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox.”
Operate Firefox is an extremely broad statement. It then goes to outline that means everything in their privacy notice (which then also includes even more broad language) and then exclusive, worldwide license.
No good will or benefit of the doubt should be given to a terms of service like this. The changes here are an expansion of Firefox’s rights - therefor, a contracting of your own.
You do you. We are not the legal entities who are the ones that will decide the final understanding of those legal words.
If anyone thinks Firefox processes the data with "nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license" outside of "the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox" like in scenario 1 (the Privacy Notice), I would like to learn about which codes in Firefox that do that. It would be really useful as well if there would be legal disputes in court to Mozilla that could clarify these things.
No one wants a terms of service like that, of course, because we all agree implicitly that the softwares do what we input in it. However, not all lawyers or legals are "we", many of them always want things interpreted explicitly to make those activities "clearer" for their jobs when legal confrontations happen. Like Epic founder said:
> The license says that when you type stuff, the program can use the stuff you typed to do the thing you asked it to do. This is what programs ordinarily do, but nowadays lawyers tend to advise companies to say it explicitly.
Typing on your own computer, and having the draft stored into local storage requires absolutely no policy at all. If anyone else's computer is involved with that, then it's a problem.
Also it makes no sense for a program that runs on your own computer to have "Terms of Use".
Exactly, Mozilla just tries to mislead people that their "web services" are indivisible parts of Firefox, but they're not, for me it's a software running on my computer.
I don’t think that they are trying to mislead at all. At no point do they call Firefox a service. Instead they call Pocket a service, and their VPN a service, and so on.
I agree with you, but it seems that a lot of lawyers do not. Most of the other browsers have the same language in their ToS, as do many programs like Microsoft Office.
Yes, we all know that. But the ones that "don't want" to know that are the lawyers and the legal entities. Whatever we scream down here, Mozilla Corporation is the one who will face those legal confrontations, and whatever we agree implicitly here with the softwares won't hold candles to those lawyers and courts without explicit legal wordings.
When did you request that firefox back up the content to your profile? Bear in mind that a nontechnical user has no idea it does this, and a technical user only realizes it does this after reading the code or experiencing a crash. You "requested" this behavior implicitly by using firefox. So any behavior firefox has, now, or in the future with data you input is implicitly something you requested.
If firefox starts backing up your profile to a mozilla server, encrypted, you requested it. If there is an additional encryption key that lets mozilla decrypt it and sell it to OpenAI, you requested it.
Also, I am requesting that firefox send this post to HN by pressing the reply button. By the terms of firefox's ToU, this gives Mozilla a license to this content. That license is not limited to the duration of the http call if other firefox behavior that I have "requested" uses that content later. Perhaps they will scrape my comments from HN and use their content in targeted ads that firefox will display to me later. All allowed by the ToU.
>When did you request that firefox back up the content to your profile?
When you enable firefox sync or whatever? Is there any evidence they're backing up stuff behind users' backs?
>Bear in mind that a nontechnical user has no idea it does this, and a technical user only realizes it does this after reading the code or experiencing a crash. You "requested" this behavior implicitly by using firefox. So any behavior firefox has, now, or in the future with data you input is implicitly something you requested.
The crash reporter has a checkbox that says "Tell Mozilla about the crash so they can fix it". I'm not sure how it can get more clear than that.
You can go into system settings and then privacy and security to allow the app to run also. Attempt to start the App once and click cancel and then go into system settings.
I've tried to watch Louis many times.. can't do it. He is just so whiny and annoying, it is really off putting to what might be otherwise interesting topics.
Im really disappointed by Rossman criticizing the CCPA as if it’s the best problem and then goes on to list all the ways Firefox had been selling the data. I’m not sure Google paying for placement is the only way that happens AND I’m not sure that runs afoul of the CCPA. Sometimes raised awareness is a feature not a bug and I don’t think it’s a “it depends on what your definition of is is”.
Moreover, the main reason Firefox runs afoul of the CCPA is that it requires a single “opt-out” button for all privacyware but they have a dark pattern (like chrome) of having 50 different settings to manage. That’s another reason why I think the Google search bar placement isn’t the reason they’re having issues with the CCPA.
Its interesting that most of Hacker News seems to use Firefox, which is such an obscure browser at this point, with just 3% market share. Now they're fleeing to even more obscure browsers. It's noble of them to incubate the competition, for the sake of genetic diversity in the software space, as I selfishly use chromium browsers.
They're nothing too major— some extensions don't work or only partially work, it locks up occasionally and needs to be force quit, the integration with iOS password managers seems wonky and sometimes targets the wrong field.
Chargebacks can’t be filed for every grievance. There is a specific list of circumstances that might qualify for chargebacks. I would seriously doubt that making a donation and then having the organization introduce new policies later would qualify under most agreements.
Frivolous chargebacks are not without consequence. One probably wouldn’t cause any obvious problems but if someone develops a pattern of weaponizing the chargeback system for other than the intended purpose (non-delivery of goods, product not as advertised and returns not accepted, etc) then the card issuer can drop the customer. Chargebacks are expensive for them and false chargebacks make you a risky, money-losing customer.
>(And if you donated to Mozilla in the past by credit card, consider a chargeback.)
???
A chargeback isn't supposed to be some sort of ultra bad review. It can only be invoked for specific reasons, like the merchant failing to deliver goods/services as expected, or an unauthorized payment. A donation is by definition a payment without expectation for anything in return, so you're going to have a hard time claiming the former. You might be more successful with the latter, but you'd also be committing wire fraud in the process.
> you'd also be committing wire fraud in the process
No, it’s a commercial dispute being litigated—for now—through private channels. I and the others who have with me collectively donated seven figures to Mozilla over the years feel we were materially mislead.
>No, it’s a commercial dispute being litigated—for now—through private channels.
If you read my comment more carefully you'd see only I only said "the latter" (ie. "unauthorized payment") was "wire fraud. You telling a bank that you didn't authorize the charge, when you did did in fact authorize the charge, would be wire fraud. You reporting it to the credit card company instead of the FBI or whatever is irrelevant.
>I and the others who have with me collectively donated seven figures to Mozilla over the years feel we were materially mislead.
Irrelevant. It's a donation and therefore there's no expectation of any goods or services being delivered. "Company was more evil than I thought" isn't a valid chargeback reason. You can't chargeback your Tesla purchase because Musk did that salute.
> You telling a bank that you didn't authorize the charge
Not necessary. I’m saying I did not receive services as I thought promised. Important that this is with a credit card.
> It's a donation and therefore there's no expectation of any goods or services being delivered
Sure. It’s a vindictive move. I believe I was lied to. If I donate to a fraud, I’m allowed to charge it back. Same thought here. No allegations of criminality, of course. But merchant disputes are privately litigated; I don’t need to prove a crime to force a chargeback.
> You can't chargeback your Tesla purchase because Musk did that salute
If you bought it recently on a card and return the car I honestly don’t see why not. I’ve returned products by leaving them on the counter and issuing a chargeback. The clerks almost always couldn’t care less. And it’s not like the card issuer is going to pick the merchant in a dispute with a valued cardholder.
> I’m saying I did not receive services as I thought promised.
You made a tax-deductible donation to a nonprofit. What goods and services did Mozilla agree to deliver to you for that exactly?
> I don’t need to prove a crime to force a chargeback.
No, but you need a valid chargeback reason, or the bank will lose the dispute process. They might or might not cover that loss out of their own pocket if you're a valuable customer.
> If I donate to a fraud, I’m allowed to charge it back.
Fraud is a completely different chargeback reason than "goods or services not provided", with different standards of evidence, different default liability etc.
> I’ve returned products by leaving them on the counter and issuing a chargeback. [...] And it’s not like the card issuer is going to pick the merchant in a dispute with a valued cardholder.
And your issuing bank has almost certainly written off the loss (to make you happy and maintain your business), or potentially recouped it out of a separate product return insurance that's part of many credit cards.
You're not sending the message you think you do with entitled/petty behavior like that, or at least not to the right recipient.
>Sure. It’s a vindictive move. I believe I was lied to.
What specific "lies" did Mozilla engage in?
>If I donate to a fraud, I’m allowed to charge it back.
If you donate to someone claiming to be the Red Cross, but isn't actually, you can probably charge back, because you were deceived amount who the money is going to. If you donated to the Red Cross, but are angry that they did/didn't help in Gaza, you'll have a hard time charging back, because there's no deception going on. This is especially true if they didn't make specific claims about how the money would be spent. Mozilla's donation page currently says:
"The Mozilla Foundation is building a movement to reclaim the internet. Together we can create a future where our privacy is protected, AI is trustworthy, and irresponsible tech companies are held accountable. But that's only possible if we do it together."
The wording here is so squishy so it gives Mozilla wide latitude to do whatever they want with the money. As long as they don't spend it all on hookers and blow, it'll be hard to argue even in regular court that deception took place.
Finally, even if you're in the right, deception has occurred, AND the "donation" defense doesn't hold, the credit card case worker doesn't have the time or expertise to adjudicate all of this. They'll hear "donation", "I authorized this charge", and deny the chargeback.
>If you bought it recently on a card and return the car I honestly don’t see why not. I’ve returned products by leaving them on the counter and issuing a chargeback. The clerks almost always couldn’t care less. And it’s not like the card issuer is going to pick the merchant in a dispute with a valued cardholder.
AFAIK chargebacks are basically adjudicated via arbitration by visa or an independent arbitrator, not by the banks themselves. It's certainly not some sort of kangaroo court where the customer is always right. The bank could choose to compensate you themselves if they think it's not worth the hassle, but in that case you're just trading goodwill from the bank for a short term moral high.
I was pitched on privacy. Whether I and others believe we were lied to are subjective judgements.
> you'll have a hard time charging back
No, I won’t and you likely wouldn’t either unless you’re constantly claiming chargebacks.
> They'll hear "donation", "I authorized this charge", and deny the chargeback
Six figures (and counting) already approved by Amex for a series of donations a friend made over a year ago!
> AFAIK chargebacks are basically adjudicated via arbitration by visa or an independent arbitrator
Depends on the card association. But usually, “the issuing bank makes the final decision on whether to accept the chargeback” [1].
The merchant has recourse per their merchant agreement. But the money comes out of their pockets first. And given it’s a donation, there is an almost zero chance that Mozilla will win.
> “the issuing bank makes the final decision on whether to accept the chargeback”
That is incorrect, at least for the chargeback types you brought up in this thread and most in-person payments.
You seem to have a flawed understanding of how the chargeback process actually works, presumably largely due to your bank covering some of your past chargebacks out of their pocket to retain you as a customer or because they're contractually or legally required to. Just because you got your money back doesn't mean that the merchant was the one paying for it in the end.
> That is incorrect, at least for the chargeback types you brought up in this thread and most in-person payments
Where did you hear this? It’s incorrect, at least for Amex and MasterCard. (I don’t know about Visa.)
The merchant pays. Merchant agreements give the banks the power to forcibly remove funds from the merchant account on initiation of a chargeback. If the merchant doesn’t replenish per their agreement they face fees, restrictions and potentially termination. There is zero chance American Express just picked up the six figures of chargebacks for the folks who put them in today.
> Merchant agreements give the banks the power to forcibly remove funds from the merchant account on initiation of a chargeback.
Yes, and the amount will be booked right back if the chargeback is eventually lost by the issuer/won by the merchant acquirer. If that happens, it's up to the issuer to further claw it back from the cardholder (if permitted by rules and regulations) or write off the loss.
> There is zero chance American Express just picked up the six figures of chargebacks for the folks who put them in today.
Receiving an immediate credit is quite typical (and in some cases required by regulations), but receiving the money back is by no means an indication of having won the chargeback case. The keyword here is "provisional credit":
> When a chargeback is filed, the process to reach a final verdict can extend for weeks or even months. During this waiting period, issuing banks typically provide cardholders with a provisional credit covering the amount in question. If the resolution favors the merchant, this provisional credit can be easily reversed. (from [1])
All of this is usually also mentioned in the cardholder agreement and the "boilerplate" text you receive as part of a provisional credit from the issuing bank. Definitely both worth a read, especially when large amounts are involved.
> the amount will be booked right back if the chargeback is eventually lost by the issuer/won by the merchant acquirer
Not quite.
The funds (and a fee) are confiscated from the merchant the moment the chargeback is initiated. The issuing bank, at that moment, has the option of providing a credit to the consumer. (After 10 days they have to.)
After a week, if the merchant doesn't object, the funds are released to the issuing bank. That either balances the credit or is paid out to the consumer. If the merchant objects, another timeline starts, but it's ultimately the issuing bank (i.e. the customer's) that makes the final call.
> receiving the money back is by no means an indication of having won the chargeback case
Of course. Now look up how often merchants win chargeback disputes. It's about a fifth of the time. For porn and non-profits that drops to almost nothing.
No, on all of timelines, finality, and who makes the final call. You're making very confident statements about a complicated process you don't seem to know all that much of.
> After a week, if the merchant doesn't object, the funds are released to the issuing bank. [...] it's ultimately the issuing bank (i.e. the customer's) that makes the final call
The funds are moved immediately, but within a given timeframe (depending on the network, but usually much more than a single week), the merchant has the option of clawing them back once again. That's called a "second presentment" (see for example [1] or [2]).
The issuer then has the option to submit a second chargeback if they still believe they are in the right, and depending on the type of chargeback, the acquirer (and by extension merchant) might get one more chance to send yet another response. If they are still disagreeing at the end of these steps, the case can be brought to the network, which then makes a final ruling, but that's very expensive (and the losing party pays), so it's usually avoided.
The money moves from issuer to acquirer and back for all of these steps. Only if the issuer makes the last move, and the acquirer does not challenge it, is the chargeback considered "won". All of that is usually hidden from at least cardholders via the provisional credit mechanism mentioned above.
In any case, your assertion that the issuing bank has the last word is simply not true.
> your assertion that the issuing bank has the last word is simply not true.
Fair enough, I was categorising arbitration as legal escalation, given its binding arbitration and precludes the courts. But yes, the final decider is either a court or arbitration (for MasterCard).
Until escalated to arbitration or the courts, the issuing bank has last word. And in no case is the issuer eating the chargeback, the worst they’re eating is a few hundred dollars of arb fees and service costs.
> Until escalated to arbitration or the courts, the issuing bank has last word.
Again, no. It depends on the type of chargeback (in particular, whether that type implies an "allocation" or a "collaboration" flow [1]) which party, i.e. issuer or acquirer, requests arbitration, and by extension who has the last word in case arbitration does not happen.
>I was pitched on privacy. Whether I believe I was lied to is a subjective judgement.
The standard for chargebacks isn't "Whether I believe I was lied to".
>Six figures (and counting) already approved by Amex for a series of donations a friend made over a year ago!
Are we talking actual frauds (eg. kickstarters) or "ACLU was more woke than I'd like so I'm going to charge back 2 years worth of donations?"
>Depends on the card association. But first decision maker is the issuer. And as I said, Amex has already cleared chargebacks from donations a friend made over a year ago.
Sounds like Amex just caved and refunded you out of their own funds because you were being a Karen, and you are in fact treating chargebacks as a super-bad review.
>The merchant has recourse per their merchant agreement. But the money comes out of their pockets first. And given it’s a donation, there is an almost zero chance that Mozilla will win.
There's nothing in the merchant agreement that suggests "given it’s a donation, there is an almost zero chance that Mozilla will win".
> standard for chargebacks isn't "Whether I believe I was lied to"
6% of chargebacks are due to dissatisfaction [1].
> Are we talking actual frauds (eg. kickstarters)
I’m talking about Mozilla.
> Sounds like Amex just caved and refunded you out of their own funds
Not how chargebacks work. And Amex isn’t taking a six-figure hit for anyone.
> nothing in the merchant agreement that suggests "given it’s a donation, there is an almost zero chance that Mozilla will win"
If you’re a porn site, casino or non-profit you’re almost never winning a chargeback dispute. (Merchants only win about a fifth of the time in general.)
>6% of chargebacks are due to dissatisfaction [1].
Note that "dissatisfaction" isn't an actual chargeback reason code[1]. The closest that exist are "Not as Described or Defective Merchandise/Services" and "Misrepresentation", none of which imply it's up to the consumer to decide. Unfortunately since chargebacks are basically arbitration, there isn't really a history of case law to determine what actually counts. I could barely find any information on what the statue (equivalent) is supposed to be.
> closest that exist are "Not as Described or Defective Merchandise/Services" and "Misrepresentation", none of which imply it's up to the consumer to decide
Issuing bank decides. Consumer advises.
> could barely find any information on what the statue (equivalent) is
There is very little statute governing chargebacks. It’s almost all contractual. Very different from paying with cash, cheque or wire.
Procedure to transfer over painlessly: Install and run Librewolf. On both browsers go Help > More troubleshooting information > profile folder > Open. Close both browsers. Delete everything inside the librewolf profile. Copy everything from Firefox Dev profile directory into Librewolf profile directory. Run Librewolf with "--allow-downgrade" once. First run was a tad slow with extensions doing some 'recombobulation'. You can now run Librewolf normally without the above allow downgrade option. Enjoy.
per-site zoom and auto-dark detection disabled unless about:config > privacy.resistFingerprinting set to false