- cross-posted to:
- firefox@fedia.io
- gaming@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- firefox@fedia.io
- gaming@lemmy.zip
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WE. DON’T. WANT. THIS.
Mozilla, for the love of god, stop cramming AI into the browser when the vast majority of your users just want a privacy-respecting browser that works.
I’ve said it before, and I’ve said it again: I will not donate any more money to the Mozilla foundation until they stop cramming AI into everything, and you should too.
They might be getting money from google that tells them what to do.
Nah, Google funds them so they can point at them and say they aren’t a monopoly, directing what they do would ruin that.
Mozilla’s perfectly capable of making dumb decisions on their own, they do that plenty
¿Why not both?
Because google only pays Mozilla because of:
- Maintaining search dominance
- Preventing anti-monopoly scrutiny
They don’t want Mozilla to compete in any AI space, because there’s already a ton of competition in the AI space given how much money gets thrown around, so they don’t benefit from anti-monopoly efforts, and there’s so many models that they don’t benefit from search dominance in the AI space. They’d much rather have Mozilla stay a non-AI browser while they get to implement AI features and show shareholders that they’re “the most advanced” of them all, or that “nobody else is doing it like we do”.
There’s no real way Mozilla could compete. Google has nothing to fear on that front like the browser front. It’s far more likely Mozilla’s ultimate intention. Is to integrate Gemini or similar further into the browser than they already have. Mozilla is years late to the circle jerk, and everyone else has partnered up.
I wish you weren’t right. I remember old firefox.
I will never forgive.
They are, but that’s only for the search engine thing. Unless Google has a seat on the board.
It’s for the default search, but it also has the side benefit of ensuring a secondary browser with decent market share that’s not Chromium-based they can point to claiming they’re not a monopoly.
Google donates to KDE also
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Their statement is “we’re incorporating AI into your browser”. What “agenda” do you think this author has? Other than informing users?
Mozilla already has limited resources. Using them to incorporate features into their browsers that their users have already made it abundantly clear they do not want, is bad.
That has not at all been our lived experience so far.
Every week it seems like there is a new AI feature snuck in that we have to tell each other about and disable.
The problem is, it’s not unobtrusive.
When I right click and I instantly get an option silently added to the list that sends data to an AI model hosted somewhere, which I’ve accidentally clicked due to muscle memory, it’s not good just because there’s also the option there to disable it. When I start up my browser after an update and I am instantly given an open sidebar asking me to pick an AI model to use, that’s obtrusive and annoying to have to close and disable.
Mozilla has indicated they do not want to make these features opt-in, but opt-out. The majority of Mozilla users do not want these features by default, so the logical option is to make them solely opt-in. But Mozilla isn’t doing that. Mozilla is enabling features by default, without consent, then only taking them away when you tell them to stop.
The approach Mozilla is taking is like if you told a guy you weren’t interested in dating him, but instead of taking that as a “no.” he took it as a “try again with a different pickup line in 2 weeks” and never, ever stopped no matter what you tried. It doesn’t matter that you can tell him to go away now if he’ll just keep coming back.
Mozilla does not understand consent, and they are violating the consent of their users every time they push an update including AI features that are opted-in by default.
i don’t want it either, but AFAIK they’re local models so the data didn’t go anywhere
They don’t use local models yet, at least not for their existing AI chatbot sidebar feature. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot
When you use a chatbot, you are agreeing to that provider’s privacy policies and terms of use. Each chatbot provider has their own terms of use and privacy policies. View the privacy policies and terms for providers in Firefox.
Some chatbots are more privacy-respecting than others.
If it’s installed and I have to turn it off, then it’s intrusive. Don’t bullshit me
Read what the new CEO says, and it doesn’t seem as bad. In the interview, he states that they’ll be adding AI with options, and since they’re not beholden to any one company, the user can choose what is best for them.
My guess: A sidebar chat you can disable, which allows you to pick your provider, and an
about:configthat let’s you customize the URL for local AI.Would I rather time be devoted elsewhere? Yes. Would this be horrible? Nah.
That being said, I could be totally wrong.
you can sign up to receive updates on our AI Window and be among the first to try it and give us feedback.
I wonder if we all sign up and tell them we don’t want it if they would actually listen.
Is “the vast majority of your users” your display name or something? I have those turned off in my client settings
Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.
Come on, this isn’t Reddit, at least skim the article before you start with the performative outrage.
It should be something that people can easily turn ON.
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We’ll just ignore the fact that the chat bot menu setting randomly appeared after an update. Very opt in. The only way to kill the task it sparks is to go into about:config and kill all the browser.ml.* options.
No one here cares what Firefox says because their actions have already hurt the trust in them.
Do the processes still run even if you toggle the setting off?
Just going through settings was not enough. The process was still running. I don’t know which toggle fully killed it because I clicked everything off at once.
Except I literally had to dig through the about: config settings to turn off AI in my browsing experience. So they are already lying
I didn’t. So why is that?
Any articles can be a click bait. The reality is what matters.
I didnt turn on AI in Firefox myself. It just appeared there after an update and was turned on. It is not opt in but an opt out.
It’s not needed. Nobody is looking for AI powered shit and they will feel it in their numbers. Why invest the pennies Mozilla can invest in a technology that big monsters are developing with billions and billions of dollars and natural resources? It’s not even reasonable, like a Pocket 2.0.
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Nobody’s saying it’s mandatory. People don’t want their web browsers to be full of bloated AI slop. Why should there be the AI components of Firefox on my hard drive if I’m never going to use them? Why should my web browser be full of low quality features I’ll never use? It’s enshittification. Not to mention the very quote you’re pasting specifies that it’s opt-out, not opt-in.
But how could the trolls enrage well meaning people into moving to a less privacy respecting browser if the post wasn’t designed for performative outrage?
Jfc. The stupidest timeline, I fucking swear.
It’s the natural progression of capitalism and market force fundamentalism.
It’s a sort of religion.
Ew ew ew.
No one is asking for AI, you weirdos!
I don’t think our Lemmy comments are going to reach Googles…I mean Mozilla’s boardroom.
Yall saw Microsoft push stupid Copilot on everyone and fail miserably and said, “hold my beer!”
Bros, take the hint! No one wants AI bullshit. Firefox was the goto switch when Google Chrome was using 37 processes and 98% memory for one website… yall are fuckin up!
IT department at my job encourages everyone to use Copilot and try to implement it more… I don’t even know WHY I’d do it in the first place
That directive came from them but they didn’t want to issue it. I guarentee you the were told by higher ups to say that.
They claimed it’s for “safety” as “microsoft is to be trusted more than OpenAI” oh the irony!
also, not really higher ups to dictate our IT what to use, that makes it even better…
I work in IT with end users who average 45-50 years old. I can tell you where that message came from.
We’ve got users working with sensitive private information who are starting to use tools like ChatGPT and Gemini because their college kids told them they’re helpful for checking writing, or work better than search engines. Our users work remotely and if they decide to take a picture of what they’re working on and feed it into an OCR, there’s not much we can do to stop it. So we need to provide a sanctioned tool that at least gives us some controls over how data is handled and stored (not that Microsoft provides anything vaguely resembling perfect data transit and analysis into Copilot) so we can try to protect sensitive information and our end users as much as possible. Are we happy about having to deploy AI tools? Not even a little bit. I’d be happier if we all just collectively rolled back a few years. But our options are sanctioned tool and policy or failing audits and here we are.
My take is a little different. If people really want AI they should pay additional cost and AI should be a addon feature on your PC.
Additional Costs -> more powerful AI centered Chips ( as least as possible power consumption ) which can use much much more local fast memory ( imho 256 GB should be in the long term the minimum ).
That enables local AI’s to be the solution for privacy and control of long term costs and i guess in 99% local AI’s will do the job fine enough.
Sadly noone will be on our side cause they want to put AI Usage / PC Usage overall behind a monthly subscription in the long term.
Right now we are just as always in the phase of making people depending on a technology.
Remote workers have webcams. Set things up so if it seems a camera phone aimed at the screen it takes a shot, sends the event to management they check it and decide wether to fire people for violating policy.
Yeah I don’t know about the ethics of that…
MS reps tightening the screw.
Management most likely read their horoscopes in some business blog.
WTF man, I just want a fucking browser.
I recommend waterfox and the DuckDuckGo browser, at least those 2 are good at least
Ducks browser runs on chrome though I highly recommend using anything but that because it contributes to chromes monopoly over the web.
Really excited for Ladybird and to see what Servo ends up being used in. Sad to see what Firefox is doing.
Ready for this internet fad to die and go back to stone tablets.
Im not a luddite, I’ll still use clay tablets.
I’m also not a luddite, I’ll use pen and paper thank you very much
How gauche - a quill and vellum does the exact same job!
Can I tempt you to join the fountain pen gang? We have shiny nibs and fun coloured inks to match your mood!
Hmmmm, is there sparkly inks? If so then sparkly and shiny is enough to convince me.
Oh yes, some inks are very sparkly.
I said this yesterday lol!
I don’t think anyone actually read the announcement, just the headline. Here was the new CEOs actual first point.
“First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.”
AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn
offon. That’s how it should be.I despise AI. I don’t want it in my browser. If I want to use AI, I’ll go to Mistral or Claude.
So no text to voice/voice to text, no translation, no ocr, no summarization, no scam detection? These are useful ai features to have in a browser IMO.
You mean the same Claude from Anthropic? The same Anthropic working with Palantir?
And then you are here shitting on Mozilla…
You guys are a joke!
there is absolutely zero reason to put ai in firefox
Local ML translation was pretty cool
I like the convenience for languages I don’t speak, but when I checked it for Hungarian (that I do speak) the results are so much worse than Google Translate or DeepL, basically literal translation word-by-word, often completely losing the meaning and tone of the sentence.
exactly it should be a firefox extension, anyone can install if they want it.
It’d be nice if it integrated with my local ollama instance and let me pick which models I wanted to use on the fly with whatever part of the page I want.
First, there should be a survey on what users actually want, no?
Because if no one wants AI and it’s “always a choice”, what you really do is waste considerable resources with as the only results, more settings users have to go through before starting using their browsers.
By people he means other CEOs.
Remember the way to disable all AI in Firefox.
about:config
browser.ml.enable -> falseFor now…
First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.
That’s a good idea to put first. Of course, like do no evil, priorities change, so we’ll need to keep a close eye on this.
Second: our business model must align with trust. We will grow through transparent monetization that people recognize and value.
Transparent is good, but if he things he’s going to add value to monetization, he’s smoking crack. There’s nothing we want from a browser that’s not already provided by a plugin.
Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.
Nobody wants that. We already had all we wanted from them in trusted software.
I don’t know if that is the reason but I wonder if the recent ruling that made Firefox loose on the cash income from Google as a default search engine has them doing a similar type of deal with AI companies, even Google, like, Firefox has a built-in interface for AI and the backend you can choose but the default one is one that some AI company pay a fee to be.
If that is the case I think it is fine, it is like a wink-wink situation, you have to have it enabled by default and with a default provider for it to be worth something for someone to pay for the privilege, and then the users can simply change it be gone with it without affecting the payout. (Unless the pay or renew pay has some metric like use statistics)
Its impossible to exist without money and you won’t buy a browser so
Sure you can. Shits been existing for billions of years.
How many fully open source browsers are there without massive labor or money infusions? Note all the browsers that are essentially chrome with a different skin?
Hey tech companies. Consumers do not want more AI, they want less of it. Maybe we just need to get the word out?
Exactly this. I would love to see just one tech company stand up and say we are not doing AI, our AI budget is $0 and our product will not ship with AI. If you really want to use AI with our system you can download a plug-in or something but we won’t waste our time writing one.
They would get a million users overnight.
Does Vivaldi count?
But ‘AI’ is the cool word of the moment! All the AI peddlers say so in their sale pitches!
I want it
I was saying boo urns! We get it. You are being served. The rest of us are being forced.
Can’t wait for ladybird to arrive to leave all this current browser crap behind me.
Remember to donate to open source development, y’all!
Minimum donation to Ladybird is 1k 😭
No, it is not.
Oh, really? Then it’s my queue!
Just went quickly though their site and saw only big donations. Should’ve check deeper.
Thanks for the suggestion. Says on it’s site summer 2026 is target for release. Still a while away, I wonder how long we have with Firefox before this takes over…
If you’re going to add AI shit it should be something people can easily turn on. It should be off by default.
Not only the setting off, but any sort of behind the scenes stuff related to it disabled as well. No automatic updating, no background processes to “keep it ready, just in case”. Do that when it’s enabled.
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As long as there is a easy way to disable it. And clearly communicated what they are doing. I do not begrudge mozilla trying to remain competitive with mainstream.
if they say it will be an AI-only browser somehow i doubt it.
Did we read the same article? Where was the ai-only part?
There won’t be
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