Submitted 3 weeks ago by RmDebArc_5@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
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.
Unfortunate Newsflash:
It’s smaller reddit.
The lowest common denominator consumed all. And that denominator includes not being able to read articles or apply critical thought.
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.
Few read the articles around here, like any social media. I could come with a headline that Bill Gates proposed using trans people’s brains for AI processing, Matrix style, and harvesting the water of the dead ones, a la Dune. Lemmy would eat it up.
The problem is the AI being here in itself. It shouldn’t be in Firefox, or frankly any other software.
Also, corporations and their CEOs lie every day, you know.
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?
Nnnoooooo you dumb bastards
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.
WTF man, I just want a fucking browser.
No you don’t, now suck down your government mandated AI slop and say thank you — you philistine.
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.
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.
The ai bubble is strong
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.
It should read:
AI should always be opt-in
There was no easy way to turn it off without meddling with about:config. If they were serious and true to their word this would’ve been be the default from the start.
there is absolutely zero reason to put ai in firefox
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 CEOs.
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
I said this yesterday lol!
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
You’re right, we should be giving money to Librewolf and Waterfox.
Sure you can. We’ve done it for millions of years.
Remember the way to disable all AI in Firefox.
about:config
browser.ml.enable -> false
For now…
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.
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 😭
They’re going to use AI to identify and block ads for me, right? Or let me set a cookie preference and automatically apply that to every page I visit?
That would be rather useful things to have AI for IMHO.
If you’re going to add AI shit it should be something people can easily turn on. It should be off by default.
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.
Thank god for librewolf, they fix most of the new Mozilla bullshit.
Waterfox. LibreWolf. Fennec.
Just use a fork; rawdogging Firefox is already a bit crazy.
As long as it is open source, it doesn’t matter. Forks like Librewolf will disable it.
It's very sad as I don't think there's a proper alternative in short term. In the end, I am afraid that I'll have to keep using Firefox because it's essentially the "lesser evil",
LibreWolf all the way
Very unfortunate development, which seems par for the course from Mozilla these days.
I’m jumping ship. Which browser would y’all recommend at this point? Preferably something I can get on android as well as linux.
Come on servo
I like to imagine that these CEOs just get like a million AI emails a day from alt accounts of Sam Altman begging them to put AI in everything and they’re all too stupud to realize it.
Well, older news is: “Firefox has evolved into the first thing I uninstall when I install Fedora, or any other Linux distro for that matter”. Since the first mention of their so-called “anonymous telemetry” I began to actively avoid them. Like someone else mention, thank God for Librewolf, Mullvad and Brave (with Leo disabled).
Firefox to evolve into not existing.
Well hopefully the different forms have their ducks in a row to strip all these “features” out down the road. So glad I use LibreWolf and not Firefox proper anymore
AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
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.
goatinspace@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
They might be getting money from google that tells them what to do.
kuhli@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
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
frongt@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
They are, but that’s only for the search engine thing. Unless Google has a seat on the board.
korendian@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Ulrich@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Their statement is “we’re incorporating AI into your browser”. What “agenda” do you think this author has? Other than informing users?
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
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.
AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
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.
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
If it’s installed and I have to turn it off, then it’s intrusive. Don’t bullshit me
Fmstrat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I wonder if we all sign up and tell them we don’t want it if they would actually listen.
TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Is “the vast majority of your users” your display name or something? I have those turned off in my client settings