TBH despite I don’t like this specific idea, nor use Firefox directly, I do like the usage of local inference vs sending your data to thirdparty to do AI.
They just needed to do it OPT IN, not OPT OUT.
It is though.
then why the fuck is this newsworthy? ugh. Why is there such a huge hateboner for firefox lately?
Because they keep betraying their supposed values for short-term gains.
What is the gain? What is a single gain you think they have milked from their users?
Money for their executives
But nobody pays for Firefox? Do you mean the “recommended pages”? Because yeah that is a revenue source I guess, but as long as I can turn it off I can let it slide
They get money from Google, advertisements, and selling data. Did you think Mozilla made it without paying their employees and executives?
I really don’t get it either.
It’s not like it’s a paid product either.
A lot of people would rather sit around and tear down the progress being made around them for being imperfect, than pitch in to help change things for the better.
ppl complaining on the internet about something you can literally turn off with one about:config line never change internet
The point is you shouldnt have to turn it off, its a web browser, we want to browse the web, not be subject to whatever shite Mozilla want to force into it. Features like this should be optional plugins you have to download.
why shouldn’t you have the option to turn things off? try turning off the ai features in chrome.
The problem is that it’s opt-out and not opt-in, and it should be opt-in.
why should it be opt in when it literally takes a second to disable?
For the same reason that “send me your advertising” ticky-boxes on website sign-ups should not be ticked by default: because the “feature” is detrimental to many (if not most) users and you have to spot the control before you can disable it. Worse, in this case many ignorant users won’t make the connection between this misfeature and the fact that their laptop is suddenly burning through its battery in double-time—they’ll just assume Firefox is now broken.
Firefox does run better when you disable all “ml.chat” settings.
First thing I did when some hey we added AI… was to right-click and disable it.
That’ll stop 'em ;)
Keep firing
At least they offer a fix for it:
Head to about:config in a new tab, accept the risk warning, and use the search bar to find the controls.
To kill the AI chatbot feature, search for browser.ml.chat.enabled and set it to false.
To stop smart tab grouping, search for browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled and set it to false.
Why would they bury the option… are they being paid to include this AI feature or something…?
They offer a fix behind a bunch of barriers? Is it not in settings with an obvious on/off toggle for the thing?
Just make it an official extension ffs…
I’m fine with them pulling a Pocket as long it dies in the end.
Without having much knowledge of AI models beyond surface level stuff I read, but a good understanding on how computers work it seems fairly predictable to me that running an AI model in the browser session locally would be CPU intensive. As such you would think as a developer you would start with adding the feature as off by default, so users that want it can turn it on and you can get some real world metrics on how bad that hit is going to be before bending the entire user base over the AI kitchen table so to speak.
So both doing it for something as trivial as tab grouping and making it something you have to go into
about:configto disable seems really stupid.Firefox is a good example of “either you die a hero or live long enoigh to see yourself become the villian”
So is RHEL.
It’s also an example of a smaller company trying fight a mega Corp with infinite money, gained via unethical means.
People are shitting on Firefox while ignoring what they are up against.
I have no solution for their funding issue, what are they supposed to do? Charge for the browser or ads? There’s literally no other alternative and I don’t know what the solution is.
What I do know is that once FF dies and chrome fully owns the web we are well and truly fucked.
Honesty it might already be too late.
I have no solution for their funding issue, what are they supposed to do?
Stop updating their browser every 5 minutes. Software that already works fine does not need continuious updates that will sooner or later subtract value.
How does adding AI help their funding?
Are we pretending that lots and lots of people aren’t incredibly horny for AI right now?
Actual users hate AI. Shareholders love it. It’s a bubble and the business world is trying to force it everywhere they can to create a dependency.
Yep. Make the normies depend on the shitty Ai and kill the real internet. Makes me so fucking mad.
Correction: power users, such as the type on Lemmy, trend towards hating ai. That is by no means “all users” by any stretch of the term.
Exactly.
People seem to think “if I don’t do X, that means nobody does X”
Nah, they’ve done studies and most people find it fucking annoying, worse, and don’t want to pay any extra for it.
The whole thing is an obvious supply side economics push.
It’s really annoying when it’s pushed in our faces everywhere. For getting a quick image of something you specify, or help with some boilerplate text it can be pretty neat.
I could not disagree more.
Mozilla has used the most powerful cheat code in history: infinite money for free.
Google cannot let Mozilla go under or they would become an actual monopolist, triggering a lot of laws that would force them to diversifying/selling the browser.
They don’t want any of that headache so they’re pumping Mozilla full of money, making sure that they can always operate as “the other browser engine”.
The issue is that Mozilla’s management seems to be completely incapable of doing anything interesting. Instead of ensuring that Firefox is the lightest, most optimised browser on the market while also being packed full of features (or at least full-fledged add-ons, not this crap they have), they do… mostly nothing.
Their last major update was “vertical tabs”, something that Chromium-based browsers had for around a decade.
Their previous major update was integrating Pocket…
Meanwhile, PWAs still barely work, add-ons are still dependent on the website being loaded instead of working on the browser level, the whole thing still feels bulky.
Mozilla management needs to be replaced and then we might see some movement on the market.
You’re forgetting the fact that laws are currently only being triggered if said company slanders dear leader.
If Google kisses ass you best believe they would completely allow them to be a monopoly and would ignore any laws being violated
That’s a fairly new development. And it might not last, depending on how the cheating goes next year.
So a more risk averse company might not test the waters just yet.
Hinging their entire future on the bet that their country gets an easily manipulated dictator, when said dictator is 80 years old already, would be extremely short-sighted from Google.
Mark my words: It will be Vance, not Trump who gets to be the first King of America.
The future is bleak.
I don’t know if Vance has a strong enough following. Trump is effectively worshipped by MAGAts, not sure Vance is capable of taking over like that.
People are shitting on Firefox while ignoring what they are up against.
People are complaining about unnecessary bloat. That has nothing to do with them being the underdog.
Basically, Firefox only crushes a handful of elderly cats while everyone else crushes kittens by the shipload.
They could stop paying their CEO so much and hire a few more devs, refocus their identity on privacy and performance (their offline ai translation is actually really useful), and actually give people the sense that their donations will be well spent.
They could try asking for donations, while getting rid of the massive drains on their budget.
I’ll keep using LibreWolf as my main browser while keeping an eye on Ladybird with my fingers crossed.
Why does Mozilla think we want AI integrated in your browsers ??
Mozilla does it again, adding useless crap.
Make a stable, privacy respecting, robust browser with a powerful extension environment? No let’s try do do chrome 2
Mozilla could solve all of it’s issuesby just removing all of the executives
I switched to FF after having enough of Chrome’s shenanigans. I don’t make changes easily, and I took the sacrifice of not being able to receive calls over Facebook (desktop browser, and some of my acquaintances wouldn’t leave FB), and I still preferred Firefox after that.
And now they want to turn it into another Chrome? I could still just use Chrome and have the lost functionality. I mean I won’t, but they will just lose users with that direction.
Here I am using browsers like apps. Chrome is my facebook app. I do zero else with it lol.
but really, my solution works fine. Is another 200MB on your SSD really that big of a sacrifice? I have Firefox, Chrome(in a fucking container where it belongs) and Librewolf installed lol.
I have sort of the same three browsers on all my machines.
LibreWolf: to use
Firefox: it’s the default browser and feels like it should still be installed. And just a couple times a year some website has a strange issue in LibreWolf but will work in Firefox. Honestly I’d rather do it this way than start weakening LibreWolf’s settings to make outlier sites work.
Ungoogled Chromium: I’m sure it will come in handy some day.
Even though I’m aware Google would still have a lot of my data even if I deleted everything possible, one of the main reasons I swapped (apart from the manifest V3 controversy) was the privacy problem (yes, I know, I’m still using Facebook, regardless). I haven’t thought of the container aspect, though - thanks for that.
It’s definitely an issue with the culture among tech companies.
They’re all regurgitating each other’s shit, so whenever a bad idea gets passed around, they all jump on board.
Every ignorant, fearing for their bonus CEO: “If we dont do that, we’ll get left behind!”
Feh! Feh I say!
How do you think they will do that without any money?
It’s always “just do the browser” , ignoring the fact that everything you listed doesn’t matter at all to the general public who are likely using Chrome because it’s the default on their device.
Mozilla is trying to find revenue sources but people just complain about it.
The AI integration is clearly attempting to be a new search box.
Look at the executives pay of Mozilla, there is a lot of money there to start with.
It isn’t though. At the higher end the last ceo was making 7 million. That is roughly 12 enginees after compensation and everything else… It isn’t nothing but it’s less than 5 percent of the employees they laid off a year ago.
Increasing executive pay is a problem but it will barely move the needle.
For what it’s worth, I would have no issue payibgif I knew that money didn’t go in the pockets of a few executives :)
I just want a web browser that’s not based in the USA.
It’s still a way out but Ladybird might be the alternative going forward. However, they’ve stated that it’s only going to support linux/mac with a windows version in the “eventually” column which makes it kinda hard to sell to people.
It’s actually a smart move. Linux users are the most receptive audience, and the most likely to support its development.
American non-profit open source browser from scratch is certainly better, still not it.
Even though I’ll probably switch :p I follow their youtube channel. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough and all that.
ecosia and qwant are german and french respectively :3
I mean truly independent of USA code base. Everything is still relying on upstream Chromium or Firefox with superficial tweaks and gimmicks. The maintainers of LibreWolf and Fennec which are what I’m using are more like game mod devs.
If ecosia+qwant actually forked from either and broke compatibility going their own path I’d consider them non USA. I know those two are working together on a search indexer and I’m very excited about that coming to fruition because that’s more what I’m talking about and eager to support.
I realise what a mammoth challenge this is :( Probably needs EU funding like the search indexer.
Those are search engines though, not web browsers.
on android theyre browsers :3
Ecosia on Android is based on Chromium. Qwant on Android is based on: Firefox for Android, which uses the GeckoView engine.
Otherwise they are just search engines.
USA checking in here.
Yes, please!
RIP the old Opera before they went Chromium.
Literally no one on this green earth asked for this shit. In fact, we’ve been pretty direct about how much we don’t want it.
It’s exhausting.
Well, stupid people want it and they do use it when its shoved in their face. Like how samsung updated and BLATANTLY made their peice of shit AI button TAKE OVER THR POWER BUTTON so when you try to turn off your phone little old granny gets confused that an ai agent pops up and starts recording you. Absolutely infuriating and I wish torture on whoever implemented that shit.
Like how samsung updated and BLATANTLY made their peice of shit AI button TAKE OVER THR POWER BUTTON
Was that part of OneUI 7? I’m so glad I never installed that downgrade.
It’s not their AI (Bixby). It’s Gemini. But yes.
It was. I’m struggling to find anything that was an actual improvement in the UI. Most of the changes were trivial and change for change’s sake; but some were awful, and none are clearly better.
Pretty sure this goes back to the second to last Note. It’s been a thing for years now
Power button became the bixby or google assistant button. It’s annoying as hell
Yes, it was forced on me. I have updates disabled too. Pieces of shit.
It’s not a new updated it’s been that way for years.
Bixby was not llm based, originally, and sometimes updates will rewrite a user’s custom settings. For instance, I had a galaxy on which I made pushing the power button three times turn on the flashlight. An update occurred that overrode that setting by deleting it and turned on five presses to call 911. I ended up accidently calling 911 at 3am (accompanied by a blasting alarm sound) trying not to wake someone by turning on the light.
Bixby was not llm based
I’m not really sure how that really makes any difference though. I’m not defending their decision I’m just saying that it’s been around for a while now.
I’ve just pressed my power button five times and it does call, what I’m assuming is, emergency number. It’s the wrong one for my country (genius Samsung) so God knows what that would actually do, but it doesn’t auto call I have to actually press the call button. Maybe they received some user feedback?
Seems a bit pointless given the fact that I have to press the button five times to call the emergency services but their phone number is only three digits long.
That’s goofy as hell that the emergency number isn’t localized. I think the idea that pressing a physical button 5 times quickly is faster than having to look at the phone and select options. Idk, though, I don’t use it.
No my s23 has no bixby buttons. Just power and 2 volume. Samsung DELIBERATELY updated so the POWER BUTTON activated their shitty agent. Only software shutdown was avilable until I changed.
Getting a linux phone when this dies. Fuck samsung.
The kinds of people who want that switched to Google Chrome years ago. Only people who care more about software freedom than convenience are still using Firefox today.
Holy shit I had no idea until I read your comment. I thought “surely they will have respected all of my opt outs”. I guess this is my last samsung phone lol
You can rebind it
Literally no one on this green earth asked for this shit.
This is why I use the version of Firefox that does not update.
Maybe check out LibreWolf. It’s Firefox except with good defaults. Otherwise, it’s exactly the same
Mozilla has stopped working on developing and improving their products, and is now entirely focused on adding trendy terms and garbage, to feed money to their C*Os.
They in the last year or so added built in vertical tabs , much better hardware support for decoding video on Linux, continue to support manifest v2 and high quality ad blocking. Have increased performance and memory usage.
In the last 7 years performance is night and day different as is multiple process performance and switched away from unmaintainable old broken addon system.
They also created one of the premiere programming languages which is making in roads in the Linux kernel.
@michaelmrose @swordgeek I 100% agree that Mozilla is important but it’s also clear that currently their is not enough business to keep Mozilla going. I don’t blame them for trying to make a Business , i blame them for not following their former values. You can make a business and still mostly follow values ( look for example to GOG ).
And what i don’t like the most is the change from opt in to opt out. Every new feature most users don’t want. You can argue that they know this and make it harder and harder to turn off those new “features” . The last time it was hidden in a sub menu in the settings ( switching off sending data to their ad service ) now it’s hidden in about:config.
I guess next time you need 3rd party patches and compile the browser yourself to switch a “feature” off.I would argue that it’s a bit easier to still follow your values if your business consists of mostly selling games.
All right, but apart from the vertical tabs, better video decoding, support for manifest v2, high quality adblocking, increased performance, and the useful programming language, what has Mozilla ever done for us?
The aqueducts?
Oh. Aqueducts? Shut up!
On my pixel 6 pro it takes a few seconds before I can start typing in the browser.
If you’re a little less afraid of stuff breaking, use IronFox, it’s been configured for privacy and security. If you don’t want websites to break as much use Fennec.
