After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla’s new CEO that Firefox will evolve into “a modern AI browser,” the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser.
On Tuesday, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation, the company behind the beloved Firefox web browser used by almost all GNU/Linux distributions as the default browser.
In his message as new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo stated that Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software while remaining the company’s anchor, and that Firefox will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.
What was not made clear is that Firefox will also ship with an AI kill switch that will let users completely disable all the AI features that are included in Firefox. Mozilla shared this important update earlier today to make it clear to everyone that Firefox will still be a trusted web browser.
Y'know what's even better than a Kill-switch?
Not including it at all.
And that's why I've switched to Waterfox, which honestly, everyone should, show them that it's not good enough, by switching browser.
!waterfox@programming.dev
Exactly my case as well. There are several Firefox-based browsers better than Firefox itself without the bullshit: Zen, Mercury, LibreWolf, Floorp... All are good options. But the dev behind Waterfox made a public commitment to keep this AI crap out of the browser. That sealed the deal for me.
Now if only I knew the best Android replacement for Firefox....
Check out weblibre
right now for android i recommend ironfox
Waterfox needs to get on f droid. Trying to never use Google play store, disabled it.
There's Fennec, which is similar
Until google kills sideloading
If Google kills sideloading, they will get sued out of the wazoo and won't be able to get new apps since devs won't be able to test their code.
Its really too bad we cant outlaw that. Why are we allowing 2 companies to control our mobile devices (apple, google)?
Another reason to just get rid of the stupid phone. My laptops work fine.
Serious question: I looked into it but there are no deb packages for Waterfox. What’s the best way to advocate the devs or a distro to make one? Don’t tell me to do it myself since I lack both the time and skill.
They've a public git repo, I would say to raise an issue there, I'll edit in the link in a sec, cause I forget the URL for it
Edit: that URL - https://github.com/BrowserWorks/waterfox/issues
Edit edit: you tried these? https://linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-waterfox-browser-on-debian-linux
There is an official flatpak but I like deb better. Running the flatpak for now.