It looks like they're just trying to please everyone, tons of companies are shoehorning AI into theie products so Mozilla is jumping on the bandwagon while also letting the people who dislike AI turn it off.
I'd assume that people will probably fork FF to remove any trace of AI.
That's what popular Firefox forks are though. Compile time configuration, new name and a logo. All that so you can trail upstream in security patches :)
You prefer to go into about:config every other update to turn off some new bullshit? Maybe if they didn't cripple their add-on system, people wouldn't have to resort to such drastic measures.
That's not what a compile-time option does.
Package maintainers can build two versions of the package, and put "firefox" and "firefox-ai" on the package manager so you can install the one you want. On the package without AI, every AI feature, code, and dependencies is removed - because the source files have never been compiled in the first place.
That's something firefox already do with a lot of features, and most packages do this as well. It's not hard to do and very common.
Well if you have no interest in changing the default behavior, of course you don't care. That's fine, but what about the people for whom the default behavior is absolutely unacceptable? Over the past decade, Mozilla has consistently made decisions that pissed off a large population of their user base.
The solution used to be extensions. Add-ons used to be able to do anything the browser could. So you could essentially let a trusted add-on developer toggle about:config flags for you, or modify the browser itself, as an alternative to installing a fork. When they took that option away, your choices are now (1) figure out what about:config setting to toggle and userChrome.css to add, or (2) install a fork that makes these decisions for you.
You forgot about the configuration pre compilation.
But yeah, there's generally petty good reasons behind defaults. It's also quite a significant perk to get security patches immediately and not have unpatched zero days for however long the fork takes to patch them.
But sure, you can use them if you're pissed off. We humans are famous for making our best decisions out of anger.
I think it's very interesting how we make such complicated technology that can do anything, but then try and prevent everyone else from exercising that nearly infinite flexibility for themselves and lock people into such a tight corner there's almost no wiggle room deviation...
Never mind that security is not a trump card you can just wave around to dismiss all other concerns. There are certainly a lot worse things than getting hit by a zero day
No it's not, disabling an option (i.e. add -D AI\_FEATURES=f in the cmake command) is not a fork.
There are already a lot of optional features in firefox that you can disable at compile time, like dbus support, hardware-accelerated rendering, jack/pulseaudio support, libproxy support, wayland support...
> none come in mind right now
In my experience with Debian its largely based on either pulling in a ton of dependencies you may not need (exim4-heavy) or if you want something super light weight (vim-tiny) or the package has a GUI and CLI packaged together and you don't need the GUI (qbittorrent-nox, emacs-nox)
Well once you check it once you just need to check the diff. If no changes are made to the builder conf and do AI stuff is added outside of one of the AI files, then it's safe.
Why would I want a fork when I know how to use about:config? I get certain promises wrapped in the EULA for the official binaries.
AI isn’t going away. Hopefully we will continue to develop ethically trained light language models that can be run locally and still do basic stuff like summarize, reformat, etc.
Reflexive hate of AI is a vibe, unfortunately, as we can see in this post title and the discussion. It's an anti-fad.
To be sure, there are things we don't want with AI, and it's understandable that there's distrust of how corporations are doing AI. But I find it ironic that people would tilt at _Mozilla_ for it, when Mozilla's reason for existence is to _[fight for the users](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6a7NjiFGTik&t=6s&pp=2AEGkAIB)_. If folks want AI to go right, if they want non-enshittified, personal sovereign AI, they'll want Mozilla to be doing AI and developing it.
Folks should check out the [Mozilla Summary Profile Strategy](https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/278/files/2025/11/Mozilla-Summary-Portfolio-Strategy.pdf).
I already run them 'locally' on my server for my privacy. But my browser and search engine are the last places I need AI, it's where I want reliability.
We put cancer in our browser, but its okay because you can disable the cancer in about:config until we depreciate that option.
Then you just have cancer in your browser.
Because it's an open source application? This is exactly what separates us from closed source ecosystems like Windows. Mozilla (at worst) can enable features by default, and require a fork to disable something. Anything closed source can mandate a feature and that's that.
People on the Linux sub are more likely to have significantly more technical knowledge than average, and to be more outspoken about technology and privacy rights. So if I had to take a guess, it's one of two things:
1) They have the technical skill to verify for themselves that it is disabled when they disable it.
2) They understand that those with the technical skill to verify it, most likely including contributors to the project, would shout it en masse through megaphones from the mountaintops if they found anything nefarious in one of the most high-profile open source projects of all time.
> I'd assume that people will probably fork FF to remove any trace of AI.
Also Firefox is on GitHub, you can read the source code. You cant really hide it *not* being disabled.
Mozilla has had a rotating door of CEOs chasing whatever the most recent bandwagon is, in an attempt to make the company more relevant. It's not going to work. It never has worked. The only thing the company's good at doing is keeping the browser alive and collecting checks from Google to stave off a massive anti-trust case.
Remember when Social Bookmarking was going to be the next big thing? Buy Pocket, lay off dozens of core engineers? Fun times...
>Why not make it opt in and see how many people want it?
That is exactly their philosophy.
From the November blog post about AI Firefox:
>In Firefox, you’ll never be locked into one ecosystem or have AI forced into your browsing experience.
Firefox is a non profit and doesnt have to always maximize profit for shareholders.
This means its either opt out because they took some money to include it on as many devices as possible(something i believe would be disclosed), or they think more people do want it than not.
Mozilla Foundation spent $496 million in the year ended 12/31/2023!
\- $1.3 billion of net assets (cash & investments)
\- $576 million in FY2023 annual revenue from royalties & subscriptions
\- $496 million in FY2023 annual core spending - $301M on software development + 'programs' and $124M on 'general & administrative' and $68M on 'branding & marketing'.
They gotta do something with all that money!
(Source: most recent financials statements on website: [https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/meet-mozilla/annual-reports-and-financials/](https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/meet-mozilla/annual-reports-and-financials/) )
We might be in different informational bubbles but for me so far the ones who "go crazy for anything AI" are the companies trying to make a buck on the hype. Some people I know use ChatGPT. Haven't heard of anyone saying they want "AI" right in their browser/OS/etc.
Exactly. When I want to muck around with an LLM I'll go to chatgpt. I do not want that shit invading every aspect of my life and being wedged into every application with only opt-out options. It's fucking exhausting.
I'm really tired of all of it and, on top of it, it's all just forcing the price of PC's and things to unobtainable prices.
The conspiracy theorist in me says they’re going to add a default AI agent and have Google/Microsoft etc compete for default agent for an additional revenue stream.
Like search.
> More money for them, more money ~~to develop FF for us.~~ for the CEO's pockets and Pocket-like investments, while the core product stagnates and actual engineers are getting fired.
There, I fixed it for you.
Yes, I'm salty — and I stopped donating years ago.
A better thing would be to remove it completely and just make it additional software, I'm getting sick and tired of this being pushed into my face just so some rich scumbag can become even more richer
if a feature is opt-in, 90% of users won't even know it exists. even if you throw a big obnoxious popup at them, they won't read it, they'll just look at the edges of it to find the close button.
so yeah, in this case I'd be in favour of this.
because those that care about getting rid of it or not wanting it are more often than not more tech savy and will have no trouble disabling it.
While most layman wouldn't know how to enable it if you don't shove it in their face.
So not me opening excel at work yesterday and having a big copilot logo taking up a chunk of the bottom right corner of the screen and no easy way of disabling 😑
Assuming you have privileges to edit that, you can disable it by either blanket-disabling "Connected Experiences" in the File -> Account -> Account Privacy - Manage Setttings or by going to Options -> Copilot and disabling Copilot.
I doubt those are available if your machine is managed by your org though.
Up until a few weeks ago we couldn't even access display settings, so no 😂
That said, our group policy disables copilot. It just keeps coming back every Windows update and we need to update our group policy to disable it in the new way that's popped up.
I think it will be difficult to activate this feature by default in all countries. When I think about the EU's data protection law alone, it's not possible. The user's consent must be obtained. I suspect that a corresponding query will appear when the browser is started for the first time.
It's not that easy to turn off. Searching for `ai` in the settings gives all words with "ai" in them. Searching for `artificial` brings up nothing. Searching for `intelligence` brings up nothing.
How is this easy to turn off?
Well, you can easily disable all rewards and crypto stuff from Brave, but that hasn't stopped Brendan haters from spreading FUD against Brave and claiming Firefox is so much better for privacy and freedom... Even though Brave is objectively more private and fingerprint resistance by default (without tweaks or extensions) than Firefox...
Not like Mozilla is blameless on that regard anyway...
[Mozilla accused of unlawfully tracking Firefox users and breaching GDPR - Cyber Daily](https://www.cyberdaily.au/security/11157-mozilla-accused-of-unlawfully-tracking-firefox-users-and-breaching-gdpr)
[Firefox Now Shows Ads in Address Bar: Here's How to Turn Them Off](https://au.pcmag.com/browsers/89986/firefox-now-shows-ads-in-address-bar-heres-how-to-turn-them-off)
[Firefox is now placing ads and here is how to disable it - nixCraft](https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/firefox-is-now-placing-ads-and-here-is-how-to-disable-it/)
Still, would be good for you to read this detailed explanation of what happened instead of just bliding following FUD people with hate boners against Brendan post on the internet.
[Brave Browser's Affiliate Link Controversy, Explained](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2020/06/08/brave-browsers-affiliate-link-controversy-explained)
Sure enough, *you* are spreading FUD about Firefox instead. None of these situations are at all what their scary headlines make them seem, and they all pale in comparison to every single little thing Brave has done and continues to do.
> this detailed explanation of what happened
Yep, it's right here: https://thelibre.news/no-really-dont-use-brave/
> all Brave development is done in the open
No, it isn't. This has been documented.
> if there is bad acting, it's quickly spotted
Never by Brave developers. This has been documented.
> There's no incentive for Brave in acting in bad faith to privacy conscious crowd...
This is the exact opposite of reality, where Brave is all in on crypto garbage. *This has been documented*.
You're not even *trying* to hide it. There are no "Brendan haters", and nobody is "spreading FUD against Brave". Brendan is a bad person, and Brave is bad software: https://thelibre.news/no-really-dont-use-brave/
> You can easily disable all rewards and crypto stuff from Brave, in fact, it's not even enabled by default,
Those things are not "enabled by default", but they are *really* prominently displayed in the otherwise monochrome UI, including in the address bar, extension panel and settings. They are also entirely unremovable from the various hamburger menus on the Android version.
"Sponsored Backgrounds" or, how they are called today "Show new tab page ads", *are* enabled by default though. For those who haven't used Brave btw, that means that every second time you open the New Tab page, you get blasted with a static full-screen ad for a third-party crypto service.
Additionally, as the other poster correctly noted, [Brave has a proven history of hijacking clicks and inserting affiliate links.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/gybv0e/brave_browser_found_hijacking_links_and_inserting/) While it *probably* hasn't done anything similar since that, the trust has already been broken. Brave, at least at a certain point in time, acted *exactly the same* as a search engine redirect virus.
Ai should be a tool, not a choice, a tool.
When I need to build a bookshelf I have choices in the design and tool choice
I can choose to build a steel bookshelf soldering together pipes and metal sheets, or i could nail some pieces of wood, or screw them together or I could join them with tenon and motrices and wood glue
Ai should never, ever, be the choice of architecture but only the tool used when needed for a task it is made for
I don't like chromium anymore and I came back to Firefox because of this
Forcing a tool in my browser is why I left chromium
I have no choices left
They don't own an LLM service. They don't gain anything by forcing the option and I don't think sponsorship by an LLM company is in the cards for them.
Google has been fully carrying Mozilla financially for decades. They’d be dead in 24 hrs without Big G, who also has LLMs btw.
How do you define sponsorship?
I meant by a company who has LLMs as their bread and butter. Big tech has their hands in everything and usually only pushes their own primary source of income on the people they sponsor.
So the most you can expect google to do is push ads or their search page. Gemini is a side project to them.
Without AI most of these companies won’t show growth in the next 4 years.
Google could just tell firefox to have gemini on the new tab page. Mozilla is far more a sideproject to them.
They mainly sponsored it to get out of antitrust issues but who gives a fuck about that anymore in 2025.
I have not seen many Not for Profits that are opposed to getting money for some action. They just can't distribute earnings, but they can certainly retain assets to pay bills or staff.
That statement doesn't really mean anything though. Actions speak louder than words. We'll see if they stick to that point, and we'll see if the rest of the browser suffers for the AI inclusion.
Oh my intention was not for people to actually use tor themselves. It is just that Tor Browser uses a more secure and privacy preserving patched version of Firefox.
Hence, for Tor Browser a version of Firefox without AI needs be preserved.
It's fine that you will be able to turn it off, but the real question is why waste the resources?
No one is asking for it. Why do companies not think to even ask users simple questions before deciding what they want?
You can look at the top comments in the Firefox sub.
The closest thing I can find is a post from almost a month ago making the argument that it makes sense for Firefox to add AI since their competitors are, which has a bunch of comments along the lines of "sure, as long as I can turn it off".
I have not seen any post, anywhere, that indicates this is driven by users.
My claim is you aren't going to be able to find Firefox users actively requesting AI features. At best, you will find defense of them implementing them.
It's also pretty representative of people overall. Do you have somewhere else you would like to show me where there's an enthusiastic request for your?
> It's also pretty representative of people overall.
No, it really is not lol. Representative of terminally online lunatics perhaps.
> Do you have somewhere else you would like to show me where there's an enthusiastic request for your?
I certainly don't have access to whatever market research Mozilla has done but I trust it exists. I know loads of people who use AI to some extent or another, is it that hard to believe that some percentage of those people are current or potential Firefox users?
> Only on Apple devices
the gnome web browser uses webkit, also runs on playstation, nintendo(iirc), and other systems. Also chromium is a fork of webkit and they all, including firefox, share code back and forth. It's all a mess. Only promising tech is the upcoming ladyborg browser
> I agree its a mess, but I think you are overplaying it a bit.
If you build chromium and webkit they are basically the same build system too and MANY identical source files, you get jammed up about halfway in when it starts dealing with the onslaught of ruby source files and exhausts all your ram if using too many cores and < 32GB.
AI is the current hype so everyone thinks they must include it somehow... It will end as every hype will end and we will get back normal. Normal means, AI will be a feature and not a 'we must have it' thing and many projects will rin out while others stay in the market and become a choice for us
As much as I hate it, Adobe giving you a summary of a single page is the most "we are aware of our customers" thing I have seen a company do in a long time.
Look at how normal it is for people to comment on reddit after just reading the title and not the actual post, or to comment a question or accusation that is addressed in the linked article. It's such a commonplace thing for people to read just the headlines instead of the actual article now that journalists and grifters rely heavily on it to push narratives, hell Joe Rogan has a new clip almost daily of him reading a headline on his show and claiming something the article directly contradicts. Literacy is dead at this point, my comment here is too long for a considerable number of people to bother reading. It's depressing honestly.
> Look at how normal it is for people to comment on reddit after just reading the title and not the actual post, or to comment a question or accusation that is addressed in the linked article
Happening in this very thread no less.
> It's depressing honestly.
It is and I fear the new "AI Summary" shtick is only going to make the situation worse, especially considering how bad these systems often are at *accurately* summarizing articles. [GN made a video about it happening to their content on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrwJgDHJJoE) where the summaries either got basic information wrong (calling the same GPU different names or getting the date wrong) or straight up re-contextualized descriptions with strong wording like "X company downgraded and added anti-features" into AI summaries with weak wording like "X company made significant changes and introduced features".
Google's Gemini summaries are even worse and they now take the spot of the literal first result on Google. A while ago, there was this hacky writer who googled the recipe for Red Dye for his novel and ended up using Zelda: Breath of the Wild ingredients because that was the first thing that popped up on Google and that was *before* AI. Now this sort of thing is going to happen even more regularly and with Google's official Gemini seal of approval.
The breath of the wild thing is hilarious, current models seem incredibly inept at context. I have seen Google AI results recommended answers from reddit that were heavily downvoted due to being wrong instead of the upvoted and correct answers in the same post. I have also seen it use an article as a source and ignore half the sentence it was contained in, so like the article said "Many people claim x is y, but really it is z" and the AI result just said x is y.
AI could be a great thing for humanity, it's a shame all the corporations and the average person only want it for convenience sake regardless of how wrong it is or the damage it causes. But hey now you can ask the computer to write a garbage story for you and tell everyone you are an author!
[Off by default features might as well not exist.](https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Design/Frequently_Discussed_Topics#New_off-by-default_features)
Possible business interests aside, I do feel like the people who don't want to use the AI features will have a much easier time disabling it than people who would want to use it enabling it. It does shove AI into the user base "forcibly" as these people will also probably be unable to disable it but my experience tells me that they will also be happy with the features
Fair enough, I like how duckduckgo's AI overview is both:
1. smaller when collapsed (either by default or I changed my settings so long ago I forgot)
2. An option for how often to show AI overviews, that defaults to sometimes
I’ll be the devils advocate here. Everyone is shoving AI in software because pretty much every single investor board is pressuring software companies to do so, to keep driving the stocks up.
So to survive in the market the Mozilla foundation needs to do this kind of thing to avoid seeing the money financing their operations drying out.
I don't want AI on my linux PCs. But I guarantee that there's a whole group of coders and people who use AI as a search engines who have been complaining that it's not integrated.
Those AI search results are absurdly wrong often enough in my experience I can't wrap my head around why anybody would use them. Recently I have had Google's AI result suggest an answer, I click the link to its source and it's a reddit page (which was the first search result) but it's using the heavily downvoted and incorrect answer instead of the upvoted and correct answers in the same post. Also once had it link an article as a source where the answer the AI provided was from a line that was something to the effect of "some people say x is y, but they are wrong it's actually z" and the AI had just said x is y.
it's only sometimes wrong, though. No one would care if it was always wrong -- they think it's only wrong "rarely" enough they can tell when it is wrong and just ask again. That's risky, of course, and I don't agree with that at all, but... it seems to be the mood of the times.
I've literally asked for things like "A then B" and all the sources are for "B then A", the entire opposite! Like wtf is the point of an LLM then? The whole point is that they're supposed to understand language. I would've just googled if I wanted my query to be so badly mangled.
I agree with one caveat. AI is better at getting targeted information that I want to see and linking it. It provides some initial reasoning or conclusions. You or I could in many cases just tell it the opposite is true, it will agree with us and find something to support that.
It's like arguing with someone who is wrong half the time, but argumentative - except it doesn't argue. It just provides a conclusion and a bunch of info. If the info sources are there, they are valuable. The conclusion at this point, not so much.
I have had better luck using it for things, but some of that may just be the sponsored bias on google. It's not uncommon for me to search for something and get an entire page of advertisements and sponsored links. Very unlikely that any of them are useful for what I'm looking for, and the AI has not done that yet. It will. If it can generate more money from stupid people, and naive people, by leading them to something that's a mediocre or worse answer but that has an affiliate token or revenue sharing, it will eventually go to that to, too.
I'm convinced that's what the race is on for - to not provide information so much as it is to figure out how to steer people, and then where to steer them to to generate revenue.
That and one of the most egregious examples ever of hiding behind fair use to just take knowledge from a source that generated it and present it to a user, trying to make sure the value and the sentiment is gained by it rather than the original creator.
I use AI a lot as a dev, but it does not have to have to be integrated. I need to control exactly what goes in the prompt and what doesn't. And also what I keep local and what can be sent to the big corps.
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I just want a great, open source, open standards web browser…to browse the fucking web with. I fail to see the utility in adding AI. Make it an extension it something, so I can entirely remove it and surf the web without the slop machine watching and analyzing.
Is anyone excited to see AI in any product? Did people get excited about AI in Chrome or Edge? Or ANYWHERE? Why do they keep shoving this shit down our throats if it seems nobody wants to swallow it?
I am. I can think of useful applications; e.g. a simple ai rule that scans the page for newsletter pop-ups and closes them automatically. Or automatically declines cookies, no matter how obnoxiously the website tries to obscure that option. I know there's some plugins that try to do this, but none of them very successfully.
I really hope they take this whole "it's something you can always turn off" really serious, because there's no way AI can be effective without a lot data collection.
Even if it can be turned off it still takes significant development resources from other things, and just because you can turn something off doesn’t mean it won’t be annoying (e.g having to run scripts to disable a bunch of stuff after updates, ui elements that are always present but the functionality is “disabled”, and so on)
The LLM is pretrained. Assuming they don’t use Gemini by default or something, what additional data collection would be required? Your browser already has your history and page data. If you opt in to send it to some bigcorp AI then sure *they* are collecting all your data, but this seems like one thing a local LLM would require no additional collection at all.
Yeah yeah, "Slop", "bloat", "AI bad", all all the other popular buzzwords, rip fox. Updoots the the left.
Jeez, seriously, chill with the drama. OH NO THIS IS THE END WE ARE DOOMED, THE FOX HAS AI SIDEBAR, WHATEVER SHALL WE DO!!!1one
From the statement, next to the part about the scary AI browser:
>First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off.
Seriously, if you don't like a feature, don't use the feature. If you are afraid of the feature to the point that you are scared to run software in trembling fear that you will face the feature - try to disable it entirely. And otherwise, just switch to another software, and let people use the feature, because maybe someone actually likes it.
Firefox is not more dead than it already was with it 4% market share, down from over 17% in a span of 10 years. Guess "doing nothing and just being your friendly neighborhood fox" and catering to it's whole 1337 die hard users didn't end so good after all.
> Guess "doing nothing and just being your friendly neighborhood fox" and catering to it's whole 1337 die hard users didn't end so good after all.
The Linux community/FOSS community in general has this very perplexing attitude among many where they both look down on everyone else who doesn't use their hot shit for being stupid, while also insisting that their hot shit should be reserved for the elite few.
Case in point. Great, you have the hacker browser, turns out nobody wants that shit while Google is making the Browser Normal People Use and Microsoft is also bundling the Browser Normal People Use with their OS.
You could just read the whole thing, rather than knee jerk reacting to the headline.
> First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.
We don't know anything for certain. For example, I don't know if a red brick, alongside some masonry fittings, is going to hit the back of my head at 11 AM tomorrow. We can, however, glean a few things from the past, and the past shows that *every single time* THE END OF FIREFOX has been prophesied by grifters and ragemongers, Firefox turned out to be *just fine*. *Year, after year, after year.*
> It should be something that people that want it, go out of their way to turn on.
This rings hollow because it is the same thing every Linux user says about any feature or option in any software that they personally use. They absolutely refuse to believe that anything they don't like could or should possibly be enabled by default, despite the fact that the vast number of users means that all of them are mutually unpleasable.
For what it's worth, I don't use AI at all. I turned off every single AI feature in Firefox the moment I saw it. I could do that. It's fine.
You're kidding yourself if you think there aren't people who want AI, just like there are people who don't. Personally, I don't care what direction they do in with implementing AI if they also give the option to enable/disable it.
This just means it will be on by default, so millions of people that are not tech savvy, will unwittingly be using AI.
Keep that shit out or at least off by default.
Is something that shouldn't be ON by default but OFF by default and peoples that wants it should go out of their way to it ON... Also that a statement, anyone can write nice things and later not respect them specially, nothing guarantee they don't change mind and not updating it too.
unless they changed their minds, the ai stuff is local. its annoying, but its not running on a server that requires a whole nuclear power plant and steals data (ahem, chatgpt, gemini, claude). redditors just love fear mongering
Not only is Vivaldi closed-source (the part that actually matters anyway), but, in my opinion:
- It has the slowest, most overloaded and ugliest UI of any browser that I've used. It's Opera "feature" vomit. If the mere existence of a one-click-to-disable AI chatbot annoys you in Firefox, Vivaldi's 5 trillion (*in my opinion*) anti-features are much worse from a UX standpoint. But on the other hand, if you want your browser to have a built-in Email client, Contacts list, Calendar, a cancer "vivaldia minigame", like 4 separate ways to manage workspaces, bookmarks and favourites, it might be for you (they are all disable-able, but still).
- The ad-block is straight up garbage-tier, you end up just disabling it and using UBlock Origin Lite... which is called "Lite" for a reason. It is *really* cut down.
- Sync is pretty bad. It uses two separate passwords for no reason (acc password + encryption password) and sometimes randomly disconnects, forcing you to reenter the encryption password. It's still *much* better than Brave's godawful blockchain sync. Firefox Sync rules by a landslide, Chrome is a close second.
- Linux-specific cancer: [if you want the non-flatpak, you add this browser by downloading a deb/rpm off of their website and installing the deb/rpm adds their repo](https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/install-update/manual-setup-vivaldi-linux-repositories/). You can't manually set up their repo and dl the browser afterwards. ITS JUST LIKE A WINDOWS EXE HEHEHEHE.
- It has by far the most the most different UX to other browsers. Download progress, status bar/floater, the way menus are laid out. All subtly and annoyingly different from Firefox or your average Chromium-based browser.
- They have *really* tryhard marketing about how they are "different" and "made lovingly in Europe" and "anti-AI", all while being a thin smattering of dubious features on top of Chromium.
My two cents, if you want to use a Chromium browser, just use freaking Ungoogled Chromium.
It's a Chromium browser, ergo, it is reliant on Google and, as questionable as Mozilla can be, they're nowhere near the pure evil that is Google. Suggesting Chromium-based browsers just helps cement Google's monopoly on browsers.
I mean, the current implementation is the best browsers can offer. At least for me. Aside from some visual inconsistencies here and there that Firefox is most recognizable for, you can disable whole AI integration or you can just use an AI service of your choice. Implementing an optional local model could be cool, too. Every other browser forces their service as the best and only solution, while Firefox just lets you use or not whatever.
Being able to turn off means turned on by default, which means a huge security and privacy risk for millions that won't notice this is there and what they are getting into.
It could also be an active choice, a simple first launch popup that clearly asks:
* Use Firefox with AI features
* Use the classic Firefox experience
... and forces the user to make a choice.
Of course Firefox already has local AI capability, with the language translate function. I don't remember seeing a huge pushback against it, but maybe people just don't know (and now it's the standard reaction to AI).
Snapchat decided to turn on AI without people’s permission by default. Using your face from stories and other things for their model. Should be illegal as hell
Just had to search it cuz I was curious, but Firefox currently has anywhere from 200-300 million users. I honestly didn't think it was that high. But that's worldwide. Chrome has 2/3 of internet users at over \~3 billion. I've been using Firefox since it's release, but their management is untrustworthy and I can't wait to abandon them in a few years when other browsers start to hit the market. Still a decent browser don't get me wrong, I'm just pretty exhausted with Mozilla's bullshit.
> As Mozilla moves forward, we will focus on becoming the trusted software company
Mozilla is a trusted company but AI will only ruin its reputation...
Guys this is just another way to interact with your browser. I could be wrong but essentially only really going to change how you interact with things giving you additional options to interact. I don't think this is going to be changing how pages are rendered for example or how the internet works. It's likely going to be very similar to what is in edge where you can get a more integrated version of a chat that can interact with the browser
I had to ditch Firefox several months ago on Windows since its notifications and alerts were way too invasive. I can't remember how many times I had to dismiss the notification about moving over to Windows 11 while keeping all of my tabs and bookmarks backed up or the other one with the fox mascot popping up every single update. Oh, I can't forget to mention that a few weeks ago, I had a plain Firefox.exe sitting on my desktop out of nowhere, even though I never had a desktop shortcut for it. Is it enough of an invasion to ditch it, besides the now-introduced AI bs?
I thought The Mozilla Foundation wasn't beholden to the whims of shareholders? 90% of all the AI garbage shoehorned into everything now is just to appease shareholders that think its the "future" why is this damn bubble not bursting already?
Firefox will never be able to outflank Chrome on AI features, even if they sell everyone's personal data and enshittify the whole UI.
Every step down that path simply alienates a userbase who switched to escape that stuff in the first place.
Mozilla made clear months ago that Firefox was going this route, evidenced by the change in their privacy policy that allowed Mozilla to do a lot more with your personal data than they had previously. That change hypothetically included AI scraping/training. Mozilla tried spinning it as if the data wasn't really going anywhere and that nothing had changed without mentioning that it was simply their own AI that they were training rather than anyone else's. This is that chicken coming home to roost.
[Zen Browser](https://zen-browser.app/) ([subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/zen_browser/)) and [Waterfox](https://www.waterfox.com/) ([subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/)) among other FF spinoffs, have all seen a not-insignificant boost in users, and that's not a coincidence. I use Zen and it has made *massive* gains in stability in a really short span of time; it's actually a first-cousin-once-removed since it's a fork of a browser called ARC which I guess is now DOA. It's not available for Android yet, so I'm using Waterfox there, which is about as unintrusive as a browser will likely ever get going forward though, in fairness, I never checked if Pale Moon or Midori were available for Android. Unless you're using certain must-have extensions that won't work on their platforms--Pale Moon's home-grown Goanna or Midori's WebKitGTK--I wouldn't hesitate recommending either of those as well (FD: I don't represent any of the above entities in any way, I'm going from my own user experience here).
They are trying to match chrome.
That said, there seems to be AI at every step. I don't know how anybody gets any work done. :)
I have my owno agentic AI that leverages GNOME technologies but it's all text and I have a chromadb embedded server to help me remember things. It's really nice because it's very personalized to me and I can use a local LLM.
The hard fork is not the problem. The problem is the 100 full time paid senior developers you need to keep up with the pace. You'll end up in the same situation as Mozilla as no one wants to pay for browsers ever since the IE era. So you'll need sponsorship.
It's really important to actually read this and understand that while they are pushing AI, they want to be sure you can disable all of it too.
IMO, if this is what they need to do to drive enough revenue to stay alive, especially given that Google is the only reason Mozilla exists, then I'm fine with it. As long as they stay true to the core values of privacy and independence.
AI will be just the latest attempt from Mozilla at "breaking free from Google", which means trying to get major independent sources of funding. They have been trying to do that since FirefoxOS I would say, so more than 10 years ago. All of their attempts have ultimately failed.
I predict that this will also fail.
Waterfox used to be part of an advertising company System 1. They have since "regained their independence", but its legacy sort of lives on. Waterfox is Firefox with slower updates and what are essentially some built-in extensions.
The best proven Firefox fork is Librewolf, but it sorta breaks websites because of very strict default privacy settings.
The best option is still Firefox with a custom-tweaked user.js (by custom-tweaked I mean don't just blindly copypaste everything in Securefox, you might as well use Librewolf at that point), Ublock Origin and a lesuirely stroll into the settings if Firefox adds a feature that annoys you.
No. Waterfox is just a Firefox fork. Your only option remains Firefox or a fork (which all completely depend on Firefox to function). This article is fearmongering.
As long as I can pick any model and disable it with a clear UI choice, I am fine with it. I am struggling to understand however what specific value prop sticking it in the browser offers me. Page summaries? But I already went to a page because I want to read what's on it....I don't need a second layer of text.
Playing devil‘s advocate here: Mozilla‘s devs still need to get paid. The browser needs to generate revenue for the devs to be paid. AI is the one big thing that generates cash flow right now.
So yep, seems like FF will be implementing AI features. But it also seems to be a very tame implementation that can easily be turned off. More choice than most apps that go AI. I don‘t really get the disdain here.
Look at all these other wonderful dead carcasses that private equity AND public shareholders "optimized"! (If you remember some of them)
You don't want to MISS OUT, NOW EH?
/s
That's a shame to hear about. I've got no interest in using AI in any way, shape, or form, for any reason, and I certainly don't want it being part of a product I use, whether you can "disable" it or not.
\> /inb4 "well you're just gonna fall behind the times lol" or some such
Also,
\> the announcement comes after a new Mozilla CEO appears
Why am I not surprised... Almost seems like a private equity takeover that proceeds to enshittify the product, gut the company, and float away on a golden parachute, as yet another competitor to the big-corp closed-source monopoly-wannabes bites the dust and/or gets absorbed into a for-profit product.
I'll be keeping an eye on Mozilla and Firefox, to see how they handle implementing this. If they make it opt-out, I'm done right then and there; I'll find a fork (or other browser) that doesn't have AI, is FOSS, and focuses on privacy, without ads.
\> /inb4 "enjoy your broken web pages then lol" or some such
I don't think this is new news is it, I think ai elements have been coming to Firefox for a while, started with the tab groups but I think you can opt out of it. It's still better then chrome lol
Controls must be simple? Oh, so that's why Firefox has -literally- no customizability. Floorp is the only good Firefox-based browser out there. Everything else (including Zen) is total crap.
If someone's loved relative started doing drugs, should that someone support that decision? I wouldn't call this hate, for me, it's wanting the best for the browser
You also probably wouldn't berate the relative constantly and complain about every action they do.
"I'm gonna start doing drugs." What are you doing? Why are you so stupid?
"Okay, I'm gonna quit doing drugs." Oh sure you are, why don't you just keep doing them.
Your definition of love might be more abusive than you think.
While this focus on AI certainly rubs me the wrong way (though so far the only feature I actively despised was the AI popup on clicks), for me the funny thing is how everyone complains all of the time about Firefox lagging behind Chromium browsers in terms of features, whether or not people will complain about a feature is 50-50.
Librewolf is great. It's privacy defaults are a little aggressive for my personal preferences but on a new install I need to adjust maybe 3 or 4 settings as opposed to normal Firefox where there are many many things I need to turn off just to get rid of bloat.
Mostly I worry that upstream Firefox is going to become so bad even it's forks will be a mess.
I don't have a problem with things adding AI in, it's the latest tech buzzword so of course any large organization "has" to jump on board.
But I wish projects like Firefox that are *supposed* to be better would make those kind of things opt-in, rather than opt-out/included by default. That would be the correct way to do it.
Nowadays you need ecosystems and AI has come to stay, in some form. Long gone are the days new apps emerged to solve simple problems. Cutting through the hype and finding the right dose of AI is the way to go.
In one way or another we should have known hiring a ton of pointless executives and paying their CEO somewhat under 10 million a year was going to make Mozilla go to shit.
Now they're just accelerating the process.
This is what the 500th CEO in the past 5 years or something? (sarcasm obviously) But seriously its like a revolving door of CEOs.
No wonder chrome has like 90+% marketshare
What the article ACTUALLY says:
***First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.***
What the ceo ACTUALLY says:
Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozillas-next-chapter-anthony-enzor-demeo-new-ceo/
Mozilla has a browser ahead of the competition, tech-wise, so it can spare resources on the AI. Additionally, it has a clear competitive advantage and enough resources to match and surpass Google in the field of AI research and integration.
Firefox should work on their browser and not add extraneous features nobody asked for or wants.
But that would take away resources from their activism.
Up till last night, I have only rolled my eyes at all AI implementations as they have not saved me any time and only been in the way. But, I had spent three hours looking for a song that I hadn’t heard in many years and while you used to be able to google song lyrics and get a title. Search engines are broken. I did the same with Firefox’s AI and got a result in 10 seconds I was floored for how much time I wasted.
I still don’t think I like AI but it seems like it’s going to replace search engines for a while since they seem to be so unusable.
This is a textbook example of fearmongering and taking things out of context. AI based tech is increasingly becoming part of our day to day computing, and as such we definitely want it to come from trustworthy sources and not from shady ones.
May be Mozilla is not trustworthy but how does one draw such negative conclusions from the article.
And then there is the last sentence:
"AI is mentioned throughout Enzor-DeMeo's [announcement](https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozillas-next-chapter-anthony-enzor-demeo-new-ceo/) post on the Mozilla Blog."
So what? What is your point, man?
Thats the thing tho. A lot of us do NOT want AI, don't want it included, nor want it as an option I gotta hunt to disable.
Just... make a good browser.
Speak for yourself. IMO, the issue is that the "AI" is forced on people. I don't want a data harvesting machine that also makes me more stupid forced on me. If I want to use an LLM for whatever, I'll open the website or install the app or whatever
He says outright that "[Firefox] will evolve into a modern AI browser", I don't think that the title of the post is wrong at all. If we trust this useless MBA it'll be possible to disable it for now, but that means it's on by default and there's no guarantee that it will remain optional
So the new CEO is already brain dead and clearly doesn't know his audience. Maybe they should try innovating again, but thats too expensive and could cut into the executive bonus.
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