It's easy to activate, too.
  • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
    2745·
    10 days ago

    Mozilla has released so many self-described AI features in the past few years, but this is the only one that has:

    • been requested by the community
    • received broad critical acclaim

    I hope Mozilla learns their lesson. I doubt they will, but I hope.

    • doug@lemmy.todayEnglish
      1101·
      10 days ago

      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.

        • Blisterexe@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          8 days ago

          Firefox’s runs locally while google’s runs on their (much more powerful) servers, for something similar to chrome’s I’d just get the deepl extension, which does the same thing just better.

      • Orygin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1017·
        9 days ago

        Ssshhh don’t say that too loud or the “no one wanted this” crowd may hear you. They would be very scared if they could read.

          • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zipEnglish
            4·
            9 days ago

            When I turned it off the translation thingy went away, so I’m not sure if it was AI all along and they were lying about it or not. Just as well, there’s an extension that works fine and it doesn’t reload the page every time I toggled it like the built in one did.

            • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
              7·
              9 days ago

              The translation is technically AI, but it’s a distant cousin to the LLMs and image generators that have repulsed so many people. (The term AI is such a broad and vague umbrella that Netflix recommendations count as AI.) And, even more notably, this is before Mozilla started marketing things as AI.

              It was also a joint non-profit venture with a university, rather than today’s weird gimmicks or for-profit partnerships.

              • ricecake@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                1·
                9 days ago

                It’s less a vague umbrella and more an academic category. It just feels odd to call it vague in the same way you wouldn’t call “chemistry” vague, despite it having applications ranging from hand soap to toxic waste.

                • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
                  2·
                  9 days ago

                  In this case, the vagueness of the term AI is abused by its fans. “Aha, you claim to hate AI, and yet…” they say. They should know better.

                  “Chemicals” is actually a great example. If someone said “Chemicals are coming out of that factory”, you’d rightfully cringe if a factory manager said “well actually soap is made of chemicals too”

          • Orygin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            11·
            9 days ago

            And?
            Because the term AI was not in vogue at the time, even though it’s clearly the same technology, it doesn’t count? It’s literally packaged under the same umbrella now.

            Anyway, the big issue is still tech ppl thinking their viewpoint is the only one valid, and that every generic user will have the same exact needs as them.

              • Orygin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                11·
                9 days ago

                Not all these arguments no.
                You’re defending your position that this AI feature is not really AI so it’s ok, but the others are all bad because of the two letters of the devil.
                Still AI is a marketing term, always has been. AI in the form of machine learning has been around for more than a decade, and lots of things already use that.
                The knee jerk reaction of tech circles saying mozilla will sell their soul because there is no “kill switch” is so fucking dumb. Even more dumb is thinking no other users may want any of these features. Unless you work at Mozilla, and/or do product research for browsers, chances are you most likely have no idea how people will want to use these features in their day to day.
                Even working on one’s own product in a company, few really understand the users needs and wants, especially tech persons.
                I can guarantee you, the weird gimmick you don’t understand is crucial to some.

                • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
                  2·
                  9 days ago

                  You’re defending your position that this AI feature is not really AI so it’s ok

                  I literally say “The translation is technically AI,” so no. I give reasons how the other features are different, which you seem to acknowledge a little, at least.

                  the weird gimmick you don’t understand is crucial to some

                  Can you describe how to access the gimmick and which people find it crucial? I’m pretty confident in my understanding of it and how hilariously unhelpful it is.

    • Ricky Rigatoni@piefed.zipEnglish
      28·
      10 days ago

      Problem is Mozilla needs money and shoving AI features into shit is how you get investors these past few years.

    • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
      5·
      10 days ago

      I think they’re desperate to make money since they’re losing userbass AND Google is probably not happy that most users change the default search engine away from them.

      Does anyone really think the current administration is going to break up Google? Lina Khan almost did it but like most of the rest of this timeline we just didn’t quite get there

      • douglasg14b@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        10 days ago

        Yeah it’s a catch 22.

        They either fail to get a big enough use base because their core users are not enough and they fail from a lack of funding.

        Or they try to follow trends to increase their appeal and user base, and annoy their core users.

        Most users don’t realize that Mozilla is doing what Google is doing with Chrome with an engineering team 1/4 the size of the chrome team. And that the grand majority of their costs are engineering related.

        Browsers are expensive, and Mozilla needs to find revenue streams to pay for it.

        • raldone01@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          9 days ago

          I believe Firefox could raise a lot of money through donations. If they make it clear that Firefox donations will be solely used for Firefox development. Also ideally add a quick survey to donations to see what the “donating” userbases values are. My issue with donating to Mozilla is that it is too broad and they have many products I don’t care for.

          I use Thunderbird and donate to it because I feel it’s more focused. I believe Mozilla still can use the funds for other stuff but at least I am donating for a clear project.

          • VoiHyvaLuojaMitaNyt@lemmy.worldEnglish
            21·
            9 days ago

            Firefox donations will be solely used for Firefox development

            This might be a stupid question… but how much developing does a browser actually need? I get security updates and such but how much resources does that stuff really need? Full disclosure: I’m a dumb lorry driver I have no idea how these things work. Some years ago I realized I hadn’t updated my browser in at least a year, maybe two and I had no issues lol

            • Orygin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              1·
              9 days ago

              It is really difficult to implement in the first place, and the standards evolve constantly.
              Some argue it may not be possible to build new browsers anymore

            • ricecake@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              1·
              9 days ago

              A conservative guess would be around 60 people.

              https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi

              You can click around and see the bug reports they’re working on. There are a few, to say the least.

              https://www.firefox.com/en-US/releases/

              This is a way to see what’s in each release. The ones on the left are major releases and tend to have bigger features, and the others tend to be bug fixes.

              Web browsers start with core functionality that’s very complex. Then you tack on that they’re being used for things like banking, and managing the critical details of people’s lives. That means security galore, which is hard and constant. Then you have ad people, who are also something that’s hard to defend against.
              Then there’s the constant flood of new features you have to implement to keep up with Google.

              Chrome has 1,000 to 4,000 people working on it. Mozzila employs about 700 to work on firefox, with maybe 1,000 additional open source developers.

              My initial guess was very wrong.

  • tyrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
    481·
    10 days ago

    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.

    • hector@lemmy.todayEnglish
      10·
      10 days ago

      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.

      • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        10 days ago

        Seo ruined search engines like a decade ago at least. It cant be blamed on present day AI.

        Present day AI sucks ass, too.

      • tyrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
        71·
        10 days ago

        My typical reason is I need to sound less casual than I am in professional emails. Or I’ll ramble. I don’t copy paste but I’ll write an email in my normal tone, let the llm look at it and then fix it up. I’ve also used it to help me find new books when I’m in a draught. List ones I like and it’ll spit out suggestions. Today I couldn’t figure out a website issue so I copied and pasted the html and it generated a snippet of css for me that fixed the problem.

  • eli@lemmy.worldEnglish
    351·
    10 days ago

    I’ve already switched over to LibreWolf a month or two ago. Clean, simple, and it just works.

    • wax@feddit.nuEnglish
      5·
      10 days ago

      Feels a bit snappier too, but that could just be the clean profile

    • Sunflier@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 days ago

      Does it come with an equivalent to uBlock? Can you port over your bookmarks from firefox?

      • eli@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        9 days ago

        It comes with ublock installed by default, it also defaults to having certain features enabled by default like clearing cookies on browser exit, letter boxing enabled, and webgl disabled. This may or may not hamper your usage of the browser, but you can enable/disable this stuff via the settings.

        You can also go to the Firefox extension marketplace and install extensions natively.

      • eli@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        10 days ago

        Like the other commenter said, there isn’t a LibreWolf for android, but I am using IronFox and it’s been fine. I don’t see a huge improvement or anything, but I don’t see any degradation either. So, so far it’s been a fine alternative.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caOPEnglish
    25·
    10 days ago

    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.

    • hector@lemmy.todayEnglish
      8·
      10 days ago

      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.

        • hector@lemmy.todayEnglish
          3·
          10 days ago

          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.

          • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
            4·
            10 days ago

            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.

      • ageedizzle@piefed.caEnglish
        61·
        10 days ago

        Depends where you. In some places (I think it was Japan?) Apples practice of not allowing alternative browser engines was deemed anticompetitive and outlawed

        • Leon@pawb.socialEnglish
          10·
          10 days ago

          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.

          • ageedizzle@piefed.caEnglish
            1·
            10 days ago

            Well there you go. Hopefully they get around to overthrowing the mobile webkit overlords soon enough

            • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
              3·
              10 days ago

              To be fair to most people who use phones, I don’t think they understand what a browsing engine is, let alone a browser half the time. I got my family to use Firefox, and they don’t know it’s a browser either.

    • Kissaki@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      9 days ago

      Pretty sure this is about desktop. Mobile doesn’t have the same kind of features, if at all. Does Mobile have anything else besides local translation?

  • J92@lemmy.worldEnglish
    234·
    9 days ago

    The only useful thing ive found for AI is its ability to read text from an image. Which is good for taking serial numbers from a photo, and copying from an app that otherwise doesnt allow copying on phone. Thats it. A tool.

      • BastingChemina@slrpnk.netEnglish
        15·
        9 days ago

        I remember using Google translate that was doing that live on the phone camera and translating the text at the same time 15 years ago.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        9 days ago

        Random aside to rant about consumer OCR.

        Recently for my work I had to do some OCR stuff to get some numbers out of a document that the vendor in their infinite wisdom refused to provide in an editable/selectable form. I.e. they just slapped a .jpeg onto a page and saved it as a .pdf. (This is a separate thing that infuriates me.)

        Anyway, what I’m actually here to complain about is the baffling phenomenon that every single piece of OCR software I tried ranging from open source to trials of commercial programs, to the thingy that came with one of our all-in-one printer/scanners, and everything in between is that it’s somehow still exactly as crap as the lousy OCR programs we were all struggling with in the late '90s.

        I have absolutely no idea how this facet of technology in particular has utterly and categorically failed to make any forward progress whatsoever in literal decades. I’ve personally worked on machine vision driven pick-and-place machines capable of accurately determining the orientation of densely printed cosmetics tubes, among other items, and placing them all face up in a box several times per second. Yet somehow the latest and greatest OCR transcription algorithms still can’t tell a 5 from a 6 or ye gods forbid an S, or an L from a J, or an M from a collection of back and forward slashes, all despite being handed crisp high contrast seriffed text that’s at least 60 pixels high.

        Given the incredibly low bar for performance here given that apparently every single programmer involved just walked away circa about 2001, I can’t imagine that the current slop generation machines fare any better…

        • teuniac_@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          9 days ago

          I have tried some of the popular LLMs a few months back when I had to digitise an old policy document from which only an old scan still existed. I had trouble reading it.

          The results varied wildly. OpenAI was really poor at it while Gemini got it right completely. I was quite impressed. ABBYY FineReader is supposed to be the best non-LLM software for OCR, but it doesn’t come near the performance of Gemini

          • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            9 days ago

            I remember trying to use some pre-LLM OCRs and it often got hand-writing really poorly. LLM backed seems to perform generally better, now typed OCR was usually pretty good.

            • brianary@lemmy.zipEnglish
              1·
              8 days ago

              Yeah, I never really used it for handwriting. That seems basically unverifiable sometimes, when I can’t read it myself.

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
      12·
      9 days ago

      that function is just reskinned OCR, though

      which I guess you could consider as AI and that it is a similar training data structure? not my area lol

      I do also think that AI has some use as a search engine. I haven’t used it much for this purpose at all, but a while back there was a specific type of engineering analysis I needed to do, and I couldn’t remember the exact terms or topics to look up. chat GPT got me into the right area so I could look at the appropriate resources. in that specific scenario, it was better than a standard search engine

      Of course once I found the materials I was looking for, I stopped using the chat bot and you know use those materials

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        9·
        9 days ago

        Yeah, ocr is a type of AI. The big advantage of modern techniques is that it can factor in context a bit better. It’s the same principle but a different mechanism for how you know a red hexagon with S__P on it says stop, even if the sign is dented, a letter fully fell off, it’s raining and dark.

        It also means it’s sometimes wildly inaccurate, like in cases where it’s just so much more likely that it said something else. Like how on a bright sunny day, with perfect clarity, and a crisp new sign with extra good visuals, you’ll hit the breaks for a sign that’s a red hexagon that says §¥¢¶. It’s just very unlikely that that would coincidentally be on a red hexagon near the road, so it’s more likely you saw wrong and it was actually the normal thing.

  • fodor@lemmy.zipEnglish
    202·
    8 days ago

    Step 1. Add AI. Step 2. Add (broken) switch. Step 3. Pretend to fix switch. Step 4. Hide switch in sub-menus. Step 5. Remove switch.

    … And all they actually need to do is make “AI” an extension. Let the users install it if they want to, or don’t. That’s the whole point of extensions. But they would never dream of that, hell no.

  • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldEnglish
    213·
    8 days ago

    And immediately blocked.

    I’m not against AI, I use it, but I want to be using it on my terms, not have it shoved into everything I use.

  • brokenwing@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    171·
    10 days ago

    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.

  • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    15·
    10 days ago

    The Translation feature seems to be classified under AI. Idk what technology does it actually use, but it’s done locally on device

    • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
      22·
      10 days ago

      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.

  • massacre@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2511·
    9 days ago

    So, there’s a “bug”, though I expect to FF it’s a feature: If you individually block all of the AI features, then click on the master switch to block all AI, everything’s great. But if you revert that master switch suddenly it “forgets” all of your settings and shit is activated again.

    It seems by design. And since it’s opt in, if FF “accidentally” disables the master switch (I’m betting it will eventually) you lose that extra layer of protection. OH, and I had disabled EVERYTHING in registry (about:config) before this and translations were still available. I guess it’s time for me to explore other FF-core options…

      • massacre@lemmy.worldEnglish
        204·
        9 days ago

        I don’t think I’m being paranoid by saying it:

        • opt-out rollout of every AI feature

        • only slogging through registry to manual opt out until now

        • CEO and board hell bent on monetizing and delivering features users actively do not want. I.e., enshitification

        • I have seen my own AI registry changes revert already once after a patch

    • piecat@lemmy.worldEnglish
      183·
      9 days ago

      It’s just a lazy/poor design.

      Instead of each setting having its own bit with one ‘override’ bit, they just set override by setting each bit.

      • massacre@lemmy.worldEnglish
        104·
        9 days ago

        I’d say you’re being generous calling it poor design. It’s actually reverting to “default” on settings when you uncheck instead of storing individual bits and honoring those. Why not revert to opted out - OK, that may be lazy to use a single template, but that’s not the way some of their other “master” options work. And I’ve been a FF user since it’s first releases, so this isn’t some Mozilla hate. And I won’t be going to anything Chromium and because of inertia I may just stick to FF.

        It’s also crazy that I have been manually configuring away from AI since it wasn’t even opt out… it was forced in. Most aren’t going to do that and Mozilla knew it going in. And I’ve already seen those registry settings revert once. Since this control option literally should have been the first feature for AI delivered and their entire AI push has an untrustworthy stink, I’ll say it again: I await a future release bumping the setting back “on”. “Oopsie! you can just turn it back off or wait for the next patch” after Mozilla and their partners collect their information across millions of users that aren’t paying attention.

  • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
    195·
    10 days ago

    @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.

    • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
      61·
      10 days ago

      If it’s opt-in it may as well not exist. For whatever reason, they have decided it’s important.

      • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
        33·
        10 days ago

        @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”.

        • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
          6·
          10 days ago

          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.

          • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
            44·
            10 days ago

            @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! 😄

            • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
              5·
              10 days ago

              Most roosters wouldn’t normally seek the paws of the fox to be hugged by, what an astonishing news!

              Whoosh. The point is “the roosters” don’t seek anything at all. It could be 50 lbs. of delicious cow shit, but if you don’t put it down in front of them, they’re not going to go looking for it.

              Please read my comments in their entirety before replying.

    • Feyd@programming.devEnglish
      21·
      10 days ago

      Other than link previews all the features they are opt-in in the sense you’d have to actually use the feature.

      • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
        44·
        10 days ago

        @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.

        Screenshot of confirmation dialog "Block AI enhancements?" with "or pop-ups about them" highlighted.

        • Feyd@programming.devEnglish
          41·
          10 days ago

          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.

          I don’t think it’s menacing at all. It gives an informative list of features, which is nice to know. I could see a lot of people wanting to turn off all AI then realizing they actually want local translate instead of sending everything to google.

          And you’ve got the button intents mixed up. Primary color is always the encouraged action in that kind of design. Dark pattern would be if the colors were flipped.

          • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
            31·
            10 days ago

            @Feyd@programming.dev @technology@lemmy.world

            When we develop a system (I used to work as a DevOps for almost 10 years), the technical aspects aren’t the only aspects being accounted for: especially when it comes to the front-end (i.e. the UI the user sees, the UX how user interaction will happen and how it may be perceived by them), psychology (especially behaviorism) is sine qua non.

            Shapes and colors often carry archetypal meanings: a red element feels “dangerous”, a window with a yellow triangle icon feels to be “warning” about something, a green button feels “okayish”. I mean, those are the exact same principles behind traffic lights.

            And signs and symbols, ruling the world, don’t exist in a vacuum: a colored button besides a monochromatic button may, psychologically, lead to a feeling that the colored button is the proper way to proceed.

            But… there’s a twist: imagine you have a light-gray “Cancel” and a colored (regardless of the color) “Block”. “Block” is a strong word. The length of the label text also does impart psychological effects. The human brain may see: “huh, I have this button which reads ‘block’ and it’s quite strong, and this other button which reads ‘cancel’ and it’s more easy to the eyes, maybe ‘block’ is dangerous”. Contrast matters: the comparison between a substrate and the substances is pretty much how we’re wired to navigate this world as living beings.

            Now, corporations such as Apple (Safari), Google (Chromium), and very likely Mozilla (Firefox) as well, they have entire hordes of psychologists directly working for them, likely the same psychologists who’ll work together with their HR departments for evaluating the candidates who applied for a job position there. These psychologists, and/or psychoanalysts, they know about Jungian archetypes, they know about fight-or-flight response and other facets of our deeply-ingrained instincts, they know about how colors are generally perceived by the human brain. Those psychologists likely played a role when a brand was chosen, or when an advertisement pitch was made. They know what they’re doing.

            UX/UI decisions are far from random choices from the leading team of project management engineers, it involved designers with psychologists. Again: they know what they’re doing, they know it pretty well. They know how the users are likely to keep the functionality. They know how the users, as Ulrich said, are very unlikely to touch the settings, likely to keep the defaults, no matter what those defaults are. Because they know humans are driven by the “least-effort” instinct, which is quite of a fundamental principle shared among living beings as a byproduct of the “lowest energetic point” (thermodynamic equilibrium) principle.

            To me, a former full-stack developer, the newer Firefox interfaces don’t feel like Firefox is being psychologically fair and honest with the user’s mind. Dark patterns are often subtle, and they’re part of a purposeful, corporate decision.

          • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
            1·
            9 days ago

            The most menacing thing in that picture is the bold red text, assuming it isn’t Photoshopped that way. I’ve seen Firefox implement other dark patterns, including hiding the ability to disable ads from within the homepage… But this isn’t really one of them.

            It’s also true that Mozilla only supports selected AI (and search) companies, presumably the ones that give them money. Users have been begging Mozilla for StartPage integration, but Mozilla gave them a Perplexity integration instead. Firefox initially supported local LLMs in their AI sidebar, but they hid that option early on. It definitely paints all their talk about “choice” in a bad light.

            • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
              2·
              9 days ago

              @XLE@piefed.social @Feyd@programming.dev @technology@lemmy.world

              The most menacing thing in that picture is the bold red text, assuming it isn’t Photoshopped that way

              I’m interacting from Sharkey, on a Lemmy thread, and you’re interacting from PieFed. I’m not sure if PieFed fetches the alt-text from images. If you access my original Sharkey note, you’ll see the following alt-text:

              Screenshot of confirmation dialog “Block AI enhancements?” with “or pop-ups about them” highlighted.

              I disclosed the fact that “or pop-ups about them” was highlighted. Also, a quick reverse image search would point to the original picture where said excerpt isn’t highlighted.

              It would be photoshopping/photo manipulation if I removed, added or changed text from the picture, which I didn’t.

              I’ve seen Firefox implement other dark patterns, including hiding the ability to disable ads from within the homepage

              Exactly, and even this one is a matter of conundrum when it’s brought to the table. Because Mozilla, and corporations in general, know the exact, dosimetric approach of pushing dark patterns, not too hard so all the user base would readily notice and complain, not too soft so all the shareholders wouldn’t see the “graph line go up”. Just the right amount to make things dance to their song.

              Even today, stating how the opting-out of “Sponsored shortcuts” isn’t trivial for the average user (not to mention how said user will see the sponsored shortcuts at least once as they head to turn them off), is met with people blindly advocating for Mozilla (which, let us remember, they’re a corporation with corporate interests, not a lifelong friend or a fellow trustworthy acquaintance, and corporations are driven by profit, not by friendship or psychological well-being).

              But this isn’t really one of them

              The opt-out implies a feature that was pushed without consent.

              Again, I bring my heavy hypothetical example: if a harasser offers the harassed a way out of the harassment after having initiated the harassment, would this make the harasser less of a harasser? Hell no, of course no! It’s still harassment! It turns out opt-out features are exactly that: something that gives you the “right” to leave, only after it was pushed onto you.

              And The fact that “opting-out” requires double confirmation only makes it worse, as if the hypothetical harassed were to be ask by the hypothetical harasser “are you sure you don’t want this?” before being “allowed” to be freed from the hypothetical harassment.

              Users have been begging Mozilla for StartPage integration, but Mozilla gave them a Perplexity integration instead.

              Exactly, another dark pattern, and another proof of how Mozilla is not a friend, but a corporation.

              the ones that give them money

              Yeah. And this is often the justification people often use to advocate for that: “oh, but Mozilla needs to mane money” (at what cost?), as if donation-based economy weren’t a thing.

        • Skamu@mastodon.uno
          2·
          9 days ago

          @dsilverz @technology @Feyd

          A modal in general is not defined as a dark pattern (not sure why you say that).

          And in this case a modal is used to manage a user journey “subtask”, which is a request to confirm a potential disruptive action: users may use firerox AI features for long, before deciding to turn them off, deeply changing their experience with the product.

          I agree that it could have been done as a full page, but it is fine also as a modal on desktop (not mobile viewport)

          • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
            2·
            9 days ago

            @skamu@mastodon.uno @technology@lemmy.world @Feyd@programming.dev

            Maybe I’m overly idealistic when it comes to software but, IMHO, a software (especially a browser) should be the least distractive possible. My point about modals was about feature announcement pop-ups (“Now you can do Y… Click on Z menu to get into Y”), the ones which Mozilla Firefox explicitly mentioned within the confirmation dialog, as well as the said confirmation dialog which, as far as I could find about, is one-sided, for there are no confirmation dialog to the other action, which is to activate the clankers.

            The ideal workflow, to me, is as follows: the user launches the browser software, the main UI opens minimalistically listing the most frequently accessed websites and the pinned bookmarks, the user clicks on some shortcut or types in some URL, then the browser fetches the network content from said website, parses it, fetches whatever else needs to be fetched for the specific website, renders it visible on the screen, then let the user interact with the page as they please, without a MS Clippy-like behavior of reminding the user “It looks like this page has links, you can summarize them using a clanker” on a frequent basis.

            Lynx, for example, is the perfect example of this, it’s not an utopia I’m imagining: I type lynx and I press enter, then Lynx executes and brings its TUI, then I press g and type the URL of a website, and it fetches and does what needs to be done in order to bring up the website to the TUI. No cluttered interface except for the short list of keyboard shortcuts at the bottom which don’t require user interaction nor disturb the UX. That’s KISS approach.

            When a browser has a MS Clippy-like behavior and, most importantly, when a browser brings potentially unwanted features turned on by default, whose opt-out requires the user to go through some sort of gymnastics while the usage of said feature is asymmetrically easy (seemingly no “confirm you want to use the clanker? The clanker may have access to the following: page content, currently open tabs, credentials on the page, etc…” like the opt-out confirmation dialog lists exhaustively about “enhancements that will be unavailable while the user opts out of Firefox AI enhancements”), again: perhaps I’m being too pedantic but, to me, it smells, it looks, it behaves and it whispers like a dark pattern.

            • Skamu@mastodon.uno
              2·
              9 days ago

              @dsilverz @technology @Feyd

              Hi Deamon, don’t get me wrong, modals in general are bad and it is a “last resource”. However, I agree with the solution of Firefox’s UX designer, asking for a confirmation before turning on/off the AI functionalities (as it is a disruptive action that affect overall users XD). We may argue that maybe it needed to be done via a full page… ? Or maybe not using a “switch” in the first place. Anyway, all good. It is nice to see people with this kind of concerns 👍

              • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
                2·
                9 days ago

                @skamu@mastodon.uno @technology@lemmy.world @Feyd@programming.dev

                asking for a confirmation before turning on/off the AI functionalities

                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).

                as it is a disruptive action that affect overall users

                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.

                Anyway, all good. It is nice to see people with this kind of concerns

                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.

            • Feyd@programming.devEnglish
              1·
              9 days ago

              It looks like this page has links, you can summarize them using a clanker” on a frequent basis.

              That doesn’t happen. I don’t recall firefox ever popping up a modal while I’m browsing.

              • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
                1·
                9 days ago

                @Feyd@programming.dev @technology@lemmy.world

                Maybe you got lucky and the routine which triggers said pop-ups didn’t happen yet, doesn’t mean that “that doesn’t happen”. Again: Firefox literally mentions pop-ups about “AI enhancement” features, it’s not something I’m confabulating:

                Block AI enhancements? You won’t see new or current AI enhancements in Firefox, or pop-ups about them.

                It’s ipsis literis from the Firefox opt-out confirmation dialog. They wouldn’t mention said pop-ups if they weren’t to happen.

                • Feyd@programming.devEnglish
                  1·
                  9 days ago

                  I’m out. There is no point taking with someone that repeatedly lies to try to support their point. Look, I’m against the majority of LLM usage and implementation as well, and I’d rather most of it not be in firefox as well, but:

                  1. You keep making up things firefox does that it doesn’t. I’m not even convinced you’ve used it
                  2. You keep talking about UX and dark patterns but you’re obviously making it to as you go
                  3. Basing conversation on obvious falsehoods is a waste of time
          • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
            1·
            9 days ago

            @skamu@mastodon.uno @technology@lemmy.world @Feyd@programming.dev

            Post scriptum (I’m unable to edit my replies using Sharkey): regarding the dark pattern within the modal from the opt-out confirmation dialog, I explained my understanding of it on a reply to Feyd (my reply that starts with “When we develop a system…” and explored the psychological/behavioral aspects of user interface development). I didn’t link it directly here because, as I’m using Sharkey, my link to my reply would likely leave the Lemmy environment into the Sharkey environment.