- cross-posted to:
- firefox@fedia.io
- fuck_ai@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmy.today
- cross-posted to:
- firefox@fedia.io
- fuck_ai@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmy.today
Starting with Firefox 148, which rolls out on Feb. 24, you’ll find a new AI controls section within the desktop browser settings. It provides a single place to block current and future generative AI features in Firefox.
They actually listened to the community, thats very nice.
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That’s all well and good that they give you the ability to turn it off. What’s not changing though is that most of their focus will be on integrating AI which most people don’t want. As a result the pace of other new features being tested/implemented will probably slow significantly.
Plus, even if you can turn it off, the feature is still in the code, needing updates, etc., even if you don’t ever use it. Literal bloat.
Don’t forget adding additional surface area for security vulnerabilities. Does the off switch prevent a zero day attack via that code? Of course not.
The feature would likely need to be enabled to take advantage of such vulnerability in said feature.
At least these features won’t introduce any novel security holes! /s
What’s not changing though is that most of their focus will be on integrating AI which most people don’t want.
I agree that AI chatbots are absolutely useless and have no place in a browser, but out of the three ML features in the screenshot, one is great for blind people, and another one is great for making the web more multilingual, so their usefulness is quite self-evident. Regarding ethics, at least for the last one it’s using a local model, and was trained using open-source datasets.[1]
What makes so-called “AI” bad is not the amount of users that can benefit from it, but how useful it is to the people that do use the feature, which usually means having experts tailor machine learning unto a single purpose.
I personally use the translation feature at least once a week when looking at news article that are not in English, and now I’m using a lot to translate Japanese webpages to plan a holiday there, so I’m very happy that Mozilla has invested time abd collaborated with universities to make this feature, I wish other people were less flippant about it just because it has “AI” in its name.
[1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/06/training-efficient-neural-network-models-for-firefox-translations/
It seems pretty clear to me that despite the ambiguity of the term AI, people are specifically railing against LLMs, not ML. It also seems clear to me that the new Firefox direction as announced by their CEO is to incorporate more LLM specifically into the browser.
LLM is a subset of ML. Now screen reader also use LLM to describe image for visual impair users.
Some of these are tiny LLM that run on mobile hardware.
There are also LLM that specialize in translation (TranslateGemma), specialized in coding (QwenCode/Devstral), OCR (QwenVL), etc…
I feel that people should chill out and stop these irrational hate.
HDR never, woo…
Also we have all seen this movie before. They launch with promises of having a choice to turn it on or off… until it’s no longer a choice.
When did Firefox take away a choice that was previously offered?
A lot of these are extensions that are folded into the main Firefox feature set, experimental features or not even related to the browser?
Pocket’s dead now.
Like another user said, where’s “open image in new tab”? (I notice you didn’t reply to them.)
Remember XUL extensions and real browser themes?
Remember when you didn’t need a developer account to make extensions and you could distribute them via your own website?
But of course, Firefox never takes away choices that were previously offered.
“Open image…” is still there. If you’re not seeing it anymore, it’s sites taking it away from you. (I notice you didn’t check before getting outraged.)
I did check. It’s not there.
Didn’t people generally hate pocket’s forced integration? Anyways I’ve never said that they’ve never removed features nor was disagreeing that what you said isn’t generally true. It’s just that the list posted has a lot of examples that aren’t exactly a removal of a Firefox feature which hurts the argument being made. There’s more than enough reasons as you mentions to make a case for it.
Like another user said, where’s “open image in new tab”? (I notice you didn’t reply to them.)
I don’t see where’s the relevance in pointing out that I didn’t reply to another user’s post when I’m in agreement with them.
Relax man, let’s have a civil discussion that doesn’t devolve into sarcasm.
Pocket was originally an extension before Mozilla forced integration and bloated it into something it wasn’t. The “something it wasn’t” part, Stories, is still Firefox bloatware but without the Pocket label.
The “open image in new tab” context menu option, off the top of my head, it has been 1000 small things with them, no 1 outrageous removal, but tons of them that didnt make big impacts yet still annoyed people who used them.
Edit: It was actually “View Image”, “Open Image in New Tab” was the alternative that remained. It was removed in v88
Since when is “open image” gone for you? Are you sure it’s not the site blocking you? Many do that these days, but FF still has the option. There are some addons that can circumvent sites trying to block you (part of the functionality of https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search_by_image/ for instance)
I partially misremembered, it was “View Image” and I updated the above post with details.
Actually now that I checked my Firefox, it’s still there? I’m on version 147.
My bad, I misremembered, it was “View Image”, “Open Image in New Tab” was what Mozilla claimed was the solution in the bug tracker. It was removed in v88
This happened quite often for various UI settings etc. Often there were technical reasons for removing the option (e.g. rewrites where they dropped features with low usage), but it is a real thing.
Are you talking about Microsoft?
You were always able to turn it off, now it’s easier.
You haven’t seen this movie before with Firefox. All the ad stuff and sponsoring integrations like Pocket were always very easy to turn off.
I’ve already moved several family members away from Chrome, Firefox etc
Waterfox, while sharing a basic codebase, doesn’t have any of this bullshit and runs like a dream.
Since “AI” doesn’t exist, anything can be “AI”.
For example, a translation program is not “AI”.
But people do want features like translation regardless of how they’re dishonestly marketed.
What features do you still need after 22 years of development?
HDR, hardware accelerated/parallelized layout/browser engine (servo)
I’ll just leave this here
It’s FireFox but
- no telemetry/spying-on-you
- no AI
- uBlock Origin enabled
In other words, it’s the open source browser Mozilla was always supposed to be.
Plus it’s typically not more than 12 hrs behind any FF release.Accept one of our free tanks ! They get 100 MPG and go 100 MPH over any terrain!
people (not calling you out specifically) keep suggesting Librewolf like it isn’t driving around a city in a tank. it gets the job done, sure, but most people will not tolerate its faults. Suggest something more in-between like Waterfox at least.
Suggesting Librewolf is like asking people to browse the web via Tor. it works, sure, but the inconvenience will make most people give up on gecko-based browsers and give into Google/chrome via Brave or the million other chrome-in-sheep’s-wool browsers.
Let’s recommend viable alternatives: https://www.waterfox.com/
Tor
No, it is very different from suggesting TBB or even just TB.
A few websites may have some rough edges. Some of that will come from uBlock Origin. Some will come from LW defaults like letterboxing/anti-fingerprinting.
And some websites will have issues with vanilla FF, because it’s not Chrome.
Yes, for some sites you may need to turn off a privacy setting. I have run across 2-3 such, usually an over-engineered Django or custom-coded WordPress site. 98%+ of the time, I don’t notice.
I’ve been using it for a while, and it feels almost indistinguishable from regular Firefox. Broken sites are not a common problem.
most people will not tolerate its faults
What faults?
Let’s pull some obvious ones from the feature list!
- Include only privacy respecting search engines like DuckDuckGo and Searx.
- Always force user interaction when deciding the download location of a file
- Disable autoplay of media.
- Disable search suggestions and ads in the urlbar.
- Disable Firefox Sync, unless explicitly enabled by the user.
For some other ones:
- Logs you out of everything every time you close the browser.
- If memory serves, it letterboxes by default. If it doesn’t, ignore this line, I haven’t used it in a while.
I’m not saying I don’t like these features. I do. I only accept login cookies from services I host myself.
Most people will see that as an extreme annoyance the first time it happens, close the browser, uninstall it, and never try another Firefox fork again.
Most people care enough about privacy to want convenient ways to increase it. Most people do not care enough about privacy to have to log into Facebook every single time they restart their browser.
All of these are disableable, very few people will even bother looking into how to disable them. They will stop using the browser.
disableable
Interesting word
It’s a word according to wiktionary, and that’s good enough for me
You listed a lot of very interesting features and probably convinced me to install it and give it a try, thanks, but again, what faults?
If these features interest you, that’s great! But you’re not the average user. Congrats tho. Librewolf may be perfect for you.
These are faults for most people. They’re benefits to some! Myself included! I use an even more strict browser for most websites. I am not most people, neither are you. Most of the people I know, and most of the people I interact with, would uninstall that within 5 days because it’s missing features that have been standard in web browsers for at least a decade.
Most website-breaking features can be re-enabled in the Settings menu, in a special Librewolf section
Most people will see that as an extreme annoyance the first time it happens, close the browser, uninstall it, and never try another Firefox fork again.
I need FOSS people to understand that most people will not do that.
All of these are disableable, very few people will even bother looking into how to disable them. They will stop using the browser.
Also I did say that
You have no dispute from me there. I just figured I would mention it to people who are already knowledgeable enough that a few switches won’t bother them - people already in this thread, probably not on the street
Ahh, fair. I generally see that as a justification for recommending it to the general public, sorry xD
What kind of inconviniences? I have experienced literally none - except you may need to enable DRM. That’s one then
DRM is one. On Windows it doesn’t auto-update by default (maybe that’s changed now?). I recall you have to whitelist some sites to work properly. It’s just not something I can set up for my parents and expect most/all websites to work without intervention.
I’d say Mullvad’s browser is more like browsing the net via TOR, but Librewolf is only about 2 steps behind it.
But yeah there are so many others that will still feel usable to someone who doesn’t think the everyone isn’t part of their threat model
more in-between like Waterfox
is that one still owned by an advertising company?
The original creator owns it again. That’s why I use it. If he sells it or whatever then I’ll switch to librewolf. I just don’t want ai bs in my browser but I am not a privacy nerd either.
Can someone please put a responsible adult in charge of that damned organization?
How about they just… not include the LLM bullshit in the first place? Just make a browser that strictly renders text and images according to W3C standards?
When chrome came out, it was pretty much that. Super fast, very bare bones. But people loved it because of the speed and the simplicity.
Im curious how Orion will turn out. There is supposed to be an alpha for Linux coming out now this February.
When Chrome came out, a lot of us knew that letting DoubleClick have any control over access to the Internet was a bad idea. This is another part of that.
It was just Safari (WebKit) at that point.
Now, people will complain that pizzaz doesn"t load at all, because Chrome does a vaguely defined JS-thing in a opinionated way. And then they use something Chromium-based.
The only LLM here is the chatbot which nobody is being forced to use.
The fact that it’s part of the browser at all is a problem. It shouldn’t ever be in a browser. All it should be is a tool to strictly download and render W3C compliant text and images. Everything else should be a unique program - and no, Electron is not “unique” - it’s just another copy of an awful browser.
Removed by mod
There is literally no “AI” whatsoever. These are just basic programs.
Thanks for posting, but people will find something else stupid to complain about, because there is pretty obviously a storm of propaganda against Firefox, which I very much suspect is driven by interests that are against an open and free internet.
Blocking these features may calm some people, but in reality, none of these features were used for anything unless specifically used by the user. So the claim of it making Firefox slower or using more resources or being used for telemetry were all outright lies.
A sentiment is tried to be created that Firefox is just as bad as Chrome, Edge, Brave and Safari when nothing could be further from the truth. But even people who consider themselves IT savvy are falling for it. 🙁
Interestingly these attacks on Firefox coincide with Chrome getting steadily worse, forcing Googles own standards and preventing plugins that block advertising, while reducing functionality for Firefox on Google/Alphabet owned sites.
I don’t think the proliferation of bad press is anything other than a chronicle of the decline of Firefox.
I’ve been ride or die with Firefox since early, and I’ve never daily driven Chrome. But I’ve had to keep Chrome installed to look at the sites that don’t play with FF. Little by little, FF get’s worse, and most of the “worst” these days are features, not bugs. Though their are plenty of bugs. They certainly deserve praise for keeping faith with ublock. And I appreciate that they respect privacy more than Alphabet.
I want Mozilla to succeed. I just remember when Mozilla made the case with the quality of their software, rather than the quality of their ethics.
Websites not playing nice with Firefox has nothing to do with Firefox itself, and everything to do with lazy web devs only testing with chromium based browsers and maybe Safari.
Websites not playing nice with firefox is website developers fault not bothering to test. Heck, some sites even block you from using firefox even if it would work anyway (ex: some days ago i needed to use a site that said “you are using firefox, it will not work so just use chrome” when i changed my useragent to mimic a chrome browser, the site worked perfectly…that’s just dev lazyness!)
With Firefox’s new CEO (Who is a douche canoe) I would not be at all surprised if this is the only development going in to the browser for the last two months.
And as always… There is no actual “AI” being used here.
It’s especially hilarious how translation programs, which have existed for decades, are suddenly considered “AI”. Likewise with all of “AI”.
It’s also pretty funny how mad people get about translations, image classification, grouping… These are just like basic 101 programs with zero “AI” involved. Not much to get mad about.
Agreed that it’s not really AI, but forcing a thing that doesn’t really do what is promised and uses a lot of energy to do it might might be something to be irritated about.
None of what is considered ‘AI’ is actually AI, it’s just a rebrand of machine learning tech that has been around for a few years now (and is genuinely useful in certain circumstances). It’s all ‘AI’, only the generative AI is worth getting mad about.
They plan waste $130 million on AI bullshit. Imagine a fraction of that invested into the actual browser. I can’t even eat as much as I want to vomit.
They actually listened to the community, thats very nice.
No. Listening to the community would involve not polluting the browser with that shit in the first fucking place.
Translations? Tab grouping? Link previews?
These very simple features (which have nothing to do with imaginary “AI”) are probably useful to lots of people.
The thing is, those features are older than LLMs (as in they’ve been implemented elsewhere). The only one of these that an LLM is even conceivably useful for is translation. I don’t need firefox to tell me how to group my tabs- I’ll group them in the way I want, when I want to do so.
I think the main normie user kinda wants AI stuff? I guess most current Firefox users are some kind of nerd, but Mozilla would like to get to normie users again, which are clearly the bigger share of all users, soo…
Fuck this BS.
You don’t like having a toggle to turn off AI?
I don’t want AI in my browser. Period.
Hey let’s do the thing no one wants because our management is incompetent.
I mean this was announced months ago. I remember I think it was about a month ago there was articles on here talking about it and I specifically went on both blue sky and Mastodon and roasted Firefox for making this decision.
So I can use AI to group my tabs but I can’t even group tabs in the first place on mobile? Epic prioritization
Nah, there is no “AI” grouping your tabs. It’s just a grift.
Waterfox is a great alternative
Librewolf as well!
I’ve been using it on my phone for a few months as a trial run before putting it on my PCs. I like it a lot so far!
I mean, there is a single button to disable all AI
