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Firefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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@skamu@mastodon.uno @technology@lemmy.world @Feyd@programming.dev
The thing is, there doesn't seem to be confirmation before turning clankers on (at least I didn't find screenshots in this regard), but there is such a confirmation before turning the whole thing off (that is, from the default-on state Mozilla pushed unto the software upon updating/installing).
If both situations involved double confirmation dialog in a symmetrical manner ("are you sure you want to proceed with activating this feature?" coexisting with "are you sure you want to opt-off from this feature?"), that would be fair. Pretty annoying, but fair. But this fairness doesn't seem to be happening, no confirmation dialog seems to exist for actually using the feature. The only thing similar to a "confirmation" during further usage of "AI Enhancements" would be the authentication step from whatever clanker was chosen from the suspiciously-biased list of clankers (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral; no non-Western options such as Qwen or DeepSeek, for example).
How disruptive would be turning off a feature that is far from being essential to browsing (and, in practice, may end up rendering the whole browsing experience worse with inaccurate summarization and potential vulnerabilities (prompt injection, remote code execution, etc), produced by pieces of software explicitly labeled as "it may produce inaccuracies")?
Not to say how, as I mentioned initially, the entire premise of bringing it as default-on with now the added "right" to "opt-off" is, itself, non-consensual relationship, insofar the user didn't seek it by themselves. Clankers would be a nice feature for some niches and use cases (again: I myself use LLMs, but it stems from my own decision to do so, not because it was pushed onto me; something I opted-in), but it should be voluntarily sought, installed and turned on by the user as they please, not as "default-on" option.
Sure, no problems, that's reciprocal, we're good! Throughout my exchanges in this entire thread, I tried to keep it respectful (at least when it comes to the debate and my peers; of course I'm fiercely criticizing Mozilla Corporation, because they were once the ones who "will never sell your data") and trying to debate the idea and not the peer's person.
My concerns, in the end of the day, are just an attempt to advocate for the total, non-negotiable autonomy and Free Will (as far as Free Will can get in a deterministic cosmic existence) of users, far from just my own; and this involves denouncing potential corporate biases whenever a corporation brings up another brick in the already-tall wall of enshittification, naming and shaming corporations for their greedy corporate behavior.