This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I've already switched over to LibreWolf a month or two ago. Clean, simple, and it just works.
Mozilla has released so many self-described AI features in the past few years, but this is the only one that has:
I hope Mozilla learns their lesson. I doubt they will, but I hope.
sadly I’ll likely support them through any shitty decisions they make as they are the only viable non-chromium alternative these days.
I get they’re chasing the buck and trying to stay relevant, but uhhhh… if they could be less Steve Buscemi-teen about it, that’d be great.
I strongly believe that the EU should fund Mozilla, or a fork of Firefox.
Gecko is the only viable competitor to Blink/WebKit, and it is needed
Govts around the world should be funding all sorts of FOSS projects. I know they do to some degree but not much. It benefits the whole world and only hurts big tech.
Funding FF? Maybe. Funding Mozilla? No way, not with my money.
This is probably common knowledge to you and many others, but it bears repeating: You cannot donate to fund the development of Mozilla Firefox.
Google can, unfortunately.
Problem is Mozilla needs money and shoving AI features into shit is how you get investors these past few years.
You think VC is putting money into firefox? Wtf?
I personally don't HATE ai but I don't want it in my browser or email or anything like that. I have a local llm I use for random stuff all the time but I don't need or want a company viewing everything I'm doing, adding buttons in places I'm likely to accidentally push, or training their shit on my dumb behavior. ai has destroyed much of the Internet already to the point that you almost need to use an llm in order to get any useful information during a search. Otherwise you're just filtering through ai generated webpages with the highest seo possible.
I’m curious, what do you use that local LLM for?
Search pages, they removed easy answers to questions from the search pages, the summaries just list part of the question and then... and you either have to click on those websites, usually garbage webistes written to hit those results not be useful, restating the question every which way, saying the same questions in different ways to hit the results, they will keep restating different forms of a question in different manners; then they will explain in exhaustive detail why someone would want to know the answer to that question, then give you a two sentence answer buried deep in the page if you can even find it.
Almost all of them written by machines, and ai themselves. But the only answer on the search page is now the AI summary, it's presumably their way of forcing us to use it.
I started using Zen Browser, it’s a fork of FF. Sick of this Mozilla nonsense
WaterFox
Also, the kill switch does not fully remove the AI slop. Remember to uncheck perplexity from the search engine list, and also uncheck AI suggested tab group name.
I'm going to unblock telemetry just long enough for them to see me hit this kill switch
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca @technology@lemmy.world
The problem still remains: why's this thing "opt-out" and not "opt-in"? Why not make it an official, totally optional (as in voluntarily wanting to have it and, only then, proceeding to have it) plug-in or extension that the user (let us remember the meaning of "User Agent": an agent acting on behalf of the user, not a piece of software who's become "the user") could install at any moment, out of their own will?
I'm far from being an anti-AI person, I myself use those clankers on a daily basis. However, I use them because I want to, while I still want to, not because they were pushed unto me.
Mechanisms of "opt-out" where there should be an "opt-in" is a form of dark pattern.
In fact, the very concept of "opting-out" is a dark pattern per se, because it implies something pushed unto a person, something from which they were "allowed" the "right to leave".
Yeah, it's awesome to have means of "opting-out" from something, but having an "opt-out" mechanism in place doesn't mitigate the very fact that it was coercively pushed unto the person beforehand and didn't require explicit consent from the person unto which the thing was pushed.
Speaking of "consent", situations like these are not that much different from the dark pattern "Yes / Not now" we've been seen everywhere: in certain scenarious, this insistence and disregard for explicit consent would verge the criminal (e.g. harassment), but suddenly it's "okay" when corporations (and the State itself) do it.
If, say, a situation where someone is being harassed and, only after having started to harass, the harasser offers the harassed a means to leave the harassment, does this make the harasser less of a harasser? Because that's the same absurd logic behind the corporate advocacy whenever it's said "oh, but Mozilla is offering an opt-out, you can always turn off 'sponsored shortcuts' (that is, after having been faced by the shortcut from a Jeff Bezos corp as you proceeded to open a new tab for accessing the opting-out settings, but that's totally okay), 'sponsored wallpapers', and the 'Anonym tracking', and now you can, check this out, you can turn off the clankers, too! Wow, isn't that such a cute corp, the corp with the cute fiery fox mascot?".
Not to say how it's gonna end up cluttering the upstream with (more) binary blobs, adding to the Sisyphean struggle that WaterFox, IronFox, LibreWolf, Fennec, among other Firefox forks, have been experiencing upon trying to de-enshittificate the enshittificated and de-combobulate the combobulated.
"Mozilla needs to make money". Yeah, yeah, because the very fundamental, immutable principle of cosmic existence boils down to "there's no such thing as a free lunch", amirite? After all, "money" is clearly within the table of elementary particles alongside quarks and gluons, isn't it? And Mozilla needs to make money... We had a tool for that: it's called donations.
Other than link previews all the features they are opt-in in the sense you'd have to actually use the feature.
@Feyd@programming.dev @technology@lemmy.world
I'm not referring only to the feature per se, I'm also referring to any pop-up designed to appear throughout the navigation to "remind the user about the superb features".
Said pop-up is explicitly mentioned on their "confirmation dialog" upon turning off (screenshot attached below):
You won't see new or current AI enhancements in Firefox, or pop-ups about them.
It speaks volumes about how much a dark pattern this is, the fact that the opt-off has a confirmation dialog, while the further proceeding with logging in with Anthropic/OpenAI/Google/Meta account doesn't seem to have a confirmation dialog.
And the fact that the confirmation feels "menacing" and defaulted to cancelling the opting-off (i.e. pressing "esc" or clicking outside the window; one must click the primary-colored "block" button which, contrasted to a grayish "Cancel" button, may psychologically induce the user into thinking "block" is a dangerous action), quite similar to the about:config warning screen.
Ah, and the clanker options: notice the lack of alternative options for those who want a custom clanker, such as DeepSeek, Qwen, Z AI, Brazilian Maritaca IA and Amazônia IA (to mention some non-Chinese LLMs), or even something running locally through ollama. Seemingly no option for using a custom, possibly self-hosted LLM endpoint. The fact that all the options offered are all heavily corporate options (with Mistral being the "least corporate" of them all, but still Global Northern nonetheless) might tell us something...
All of these dark patterns, among others not mentioned, are the object of my critique, not just the fact that Mozilla is shoving clankers unto Firefox.
Whenever a feature needs an invasive pop-up and the opt-out brings up a second pop-up that requires further confirmation (but none seems to be offered upon actually using said feature), it is called a dark pattern, no matter if said feature requires further configuration.
If it's opt-in it may as well not exist. For whatever reason, they have decided it's important.
@Ulrich@feddit.org @technology@lemmy.world
If it’s opt-in it may as well not exist
Just because if it were opt-in, people wouldn't have chosen to activate it, and fewer people would use it and the graph line wouldn't go up for the shareholders to appreciate? Then, maybe, just maybe, it would be quite a strong evidence that this isn't really something that the users want, don't ya think?
For whatever reason, they have decided it’s important.
There's the reason, right above this paragraph: one can only achieve what people would certainly refuse, if they pushed it onto people by use of force (not necessarily physical force, but, for example, dark pattern is a technical means of "force").
A fox can't convince the roosters to become her food, if the roosters were to have a stake on deciding in this regard, less roosters would become a tasty dinner for the cute fox, because becoming a tasty dinner isn't exactly a demand from roosters. Hence why the fox must grab the roosters, but in this case the fox gives them an option to escape from her paws.
Ah, notice your own phrasing: "They have decided". Who have decided? Not the user, not the party interested in their own UX/UI, but the very archontic architects of a kind of digital apparatus we've been compelled to use for participating in this digital realm of society (risking social ostracism if we don't), the World Wide Web.
And when a decision is made upon someone, without regard for the very someone upon which the decision is being made, even when there's some kind of "opting out" from the object of decision, we had a name for that: it was called "non-consensual relationship".
Just because if it were opt-in, people wouldn't have chosen to activate it
Because people overwhelmingly do not change any defaults whatsoever, regardless of what they like or want.
If you put a button in the settings that did nothing but automatically generate a $5 bill, no one would click that either.
@Ulrich@feddit.org @technology@lemmy.world
Because people overwhelmingly do not change any defaults whatsoever
Most roosters wouldn't normally seek the paws of the fox to be hugged by, what an astonishing news!
You see, that's exactly what plays favorably for things pushed with "opt-out" mechanisms, anything. If people are less likely to change the settings to better enhance their UX (be it due to a lack of knowledge, a lack of proactive pursuit or because they deem their current settings "good enough"), this means people would be more likely to have the clankers shoved down their throats if said clankers were to be part of default settings.
In fact, if settings would very likely go unchanged, then Mozilla could push anything, absolutely anything under they will, "shall be the whole of the Law" with the legally-required "opt-out" mechanisms in place.
In the foreseeable future, we'd have Firefox as a new "Agentic Browser" where a clanker does all the tiring and utterly boring effort of "browsing the web" as the user watches their credit card being depleted by prompt injections carefully placed amidst Unicode exploits across the web by scammers. But, hey, let us not worry, there's always a button to turn it off! 😄
all you have to do is click on Settings > AI Controls. You'll then see a very bold and prominent option called 'Block AI Enhancements.'
I don't see it on mobile though.
On Android or iOS? I’m pretty sure the iOS app is just a re-skinned Safari, isn’t it?
Depends where you. In some places (I think it was Japan?) Apples practice of not allowing alternative browser engines was deemed anticompetitive and outlawed
Same in Europe but I don’t think Mozilla spent the time and effort needed to bring Gecko to iOS. So it’s still just a reskinned WebKit.
Well there you go. Hopefully they get around to overthrowing the mobile webkit overlords soon enough
It is!? Noooooooo! TIL
All iOS browsers are webkit under the hood (aka “reskinned safari”)
Yep. It's a choice Apple users make^[probably unknowingly, to be fair] when they choose Apple.
I just opened setting on a firefox tab on my computer, clicked on the three lines in the upper right, and the settings. There is not AI controls in there, and searching settings didn't pull up any ai thing.
This is like when I tried to take gemini off of my phone, it's hidden, instructions online didn't work, the links didn't exist on my phone. It's still on there, but hasn't turned itself on multiple times when I somehow swiped or hit something as it did a year ago or so a bunch.
It should be opt in not work to opt out and we hid the way to do that.
Maybe the article was written by AI that hallucinated the setting.
I can vouch for the page being there on my Firefox 148 on the desktop.
Huh, maybe I need to wait for firefox to update or for me to restart the computer if they just did it. I'm also running an older version of windows I think, I don't even know which one actually but they tried to upgrade me for free and I told them no a couple of years back.
I think they just did it. Menu > Help > About will tell you if you're on 148 and probably help you update if you want.
I was also presented with a giant "you can opt out of AI" tab after I updated.
Are you on FF148?
Supposedly. Says 148 in About.
The Translation feature seems to be classified under AI. Idk what technology does it actually use, but it's done locally on device
They're using something that technically is AI, but it was broadly never marketed as such, because it was built before "AI" became a marketing buzzword.
Yeah saw this morning, turned the kill switch on immediately.
Wait so where is this AI on my firefox? I haven't seen anything, is it running by default, and what's it doing?
How do I shut it down then? Everyone hates AI so I don't understand what mozilla had to gain by bringing in AI, or what they had it doing in the first place?
Link previews happen if you hold click on a link or choose it in the right click menu. By default it shows pretty much just the title of the page and a banner asking you to enable an ai summaries.
Everyone hates AI so I don't understand what mozilla had to gain by bringing in AI
Same as everyone else
FTA
If you don't want to see AI on Firefox anymore, all you have to do is click on Settings > AI Controls. You'll then see a very bold and prominent option called 'Block AI Enhancements.' Hit that, and every AI tool gets disabled.
