Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740500373677782

by twapi • 7 months ago

586 546 7 months ago

mastodon.social

jamesgill3• 7 months ago

Why not make them disabled by default, with the option to turn them on?

RegnisGnaw• 7 months ago

Because money! Seriously that's the answer to most of these questions.

al_borland3• 7 months ago

Is there a business model behind actually making profit off this stuff yet? Last I looked, Mozilla is still making almost all their money from Google.

lawtalkinghuman5• 7 months ago

They could even make the AI features available as extensions, downloadable from addons.mozilla.org

That way, the users who want them can download them, and the users who don't, don't.

rk06• 7 months ago

to pump adoption number. it is well known that adoption rate is much higher when people are forced to opt-in be default.

because no one in right mind, would opt-in AI seriously. and definitely never on corporate machine

HelloUsername• 7 months ago

Why not make them disabled by default, with the option to turn them on?

"All AI features will also be opt-in"

jamesgill3• 7 months ago

He said there would be both an "AI kill switch" but that it's also "opt-in". Taken together, his two statements seem a little...odd.

netsharc• 7 months ago

I think Facebook did a study that making options opt-in means only a tiny tiny percentage of users will ever activate them. People never look around in settings.

I suppose if - after you click away the popup that says "Thank you for loving Firefox"(1) - a popup shows that says "Hey, hey, look at me, look we have this new feature, it'll blow you away. Do you want to enable it?" would be obnoxious but satisfies the idea of "opt-in".

(1) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1791524 - I still remember how icked I was seeing this popup.

bigstrat2003• 7 months ago

making options opt-in means only a tiny tiny percentage of users will ever activate them

Why exactly should I, a user, care about this? I don't want useless crap shoved in my face, period. I don't care that people might not turn on someone's pet feature if they don't enable it by default.

eps2• 7 months ago

Don't need to run studies to understand that.

If it's off be default it will stay off unless the user is somehow made to try it. Default opt-in is one option to do that, the simplest one, but it's not the only one. The rest require explaining clearly what the user will get out of enabling it ... and that often is difficult to do succinctly, or convincingly. So shovelling it down everyone's throat it is.

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

Yes, that’s the intent of the argument. If it’s so valuable , people will find it, talk about it, amd it’ll spread on its merits.

kevin0612• 7 months ago

Yeah the option is called Waterfox, Palemoon, or even Vivaldi.

forgotpwd163• 7 months ago

Quite surprised at Vivaldi. Considered that as Opera spiritual successor including any possible feature, will've been one of the first browsers adding AI.

reidrac3• 7 months ago

Vivaldi is not open source. Not quite an option.

kevin0612• 7 months ago

https://vivaldi.com/source/

evo_9• 7 months ago

I hope Zen disables this by default, or completely removes it if that’s an option.

VortexLain2• 7 months ago

Such features should be disabled by default, but as a user of Zen, I really hope it'd be possible to enable AI features.

runtimepanic• 7 months ago

This feels less like an “anti-AI” stance and more like a trust and control issue. For browsers especially, users have very different threat models and performance expectations, and “always on” AI features blur that line quickly. An explicit opt-out makes sense, but I wonder if the more important question is whether these features can be implemented in a way that’s truly local and auditable. If users can’t clearly understand where data goes and what runs on-device, toggles become a necessary safety valve rather than a preference.

ronsor• 7 months ago

I haven't paid close attention, but as far as I can tell, Mozilla has mostly invested in local AI for tasks such as translation, summarization, and organization. As long as that's the case, I don't see any particular safety or privacy risks; if it works without an Internet connection, it's probably OK.

forgotpwd163• 7 months ago

Summarization is using a chosen cloud-based AI provider.

ekjhgkejhgk• 7 months ago

Mullvad browser doesn't have an option to disable all AI features because it doesn't have any.

(The Mullvad guys took Tor browser for its resistance to fingerprinting and removed the connection the Tor network. You don't need Mullvad VPN to use the browser)

https://mullvad.net/en/browser

e2le• 7 months ago

Of all the AI features added recently, local translations is one that I would be OK with being enabled by default. It's useful, and its value proposition is much less dubious.

mhitza• 7 months ago

I had to use it a couple times recently in Firefox on Android, and it's a nice thing to have.

The UX is not polished, and not responsive. No indicator that translation is happening, then the interface disappears for the translation to materialize, with multisecond delays. All understandable if the model is churning my mobile CPU, but it needs a clear visual insicator that something happening

marcosdumay2• 7 months ago

What are all the recent AI features? Because I ever only noticed the local translation, and can't find anything else by looking at the menu.

EDIT: Oh, I've found a context menu item-list.

AuthAuth7• 7 months ago

What about voice to text, text to voice, alt text generation for images that dont have them. Search suggestions, auto correct, malicious website detection.

Those are all features using AI and features I consider to be useful

Dwedit• 7 months ago

I don't like how translation is only unavailable when the browser "thinks" the whole site is in a particular language. What if there's a single sentence that's not? Or if it guesses the site's language incorrectly? No translation for you.

We need more control over the feature. Even just the ability to select text, right click, and have a "Translation" menu would be huge. Looks like there is such a feature, but it doesn't let you pick the language pairs, which is the most basic requirement of translation.

fooofw• 7 months ago

My version of Firefox (146.0 on Debian) has exactly this. If I select a sentence and right-click, I get the menu item "Translate selection to <LANGUAGE>". In the resulting box, I can change the language pair - but the defaults that I have seen were also reasonable.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation has the text: "A new Translate selection feature has been added starting in Firefox version 128, that enables you to highlight and translate selected text."

Edit: Sorry, I misread the comment to say that there was no such menu item. Edited to reflect this.

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

before Firefox put it in the browser, the kinda finicky extension (which I still have installed) does in fact have this feature. highlight a work and you can translate specific passages.

wkat42429• 7 months ago

Yes but local translation already is in Firefox and it's already made with some kind of AI model. Nobody complained about that.

joduplessis• 7 months ago

We've been calling it the AI kill switch internally. I'm sure it'll ship with a less murderous name, but that's how seriously and absolutely we're taking this.

Honestly, is anybody reading what's getting written anymore? If it gets taken seriously it would ship with an enable-AI button, not the other way round.

yoavm7• 7 months ago

I love threads about Mozilla. New CEO says he's not going to remove adblockers, people suspect him for planning to remove adblockers. Mozilla says they'll add a killswitch for all AI features (so that the tiny but vocal anti-AI minority will be happy), and people blame them for not having it as an enable-switch.

Whatever they do, they simply cannot win. I'm personally starting to suspect the main issue with Mozilla is its users.

dsr_• 7 months ago

... because Mozilla doesn't pay any attention to them?

ep103• 7 months ago

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think you're right, and I think the reason for it is because Google has historically had an extremely effective astroturf marketing team for Chrome

reidrac3• 7 months ago

so that the tiny but vocal anti-AI minority will be happy

[citation needed]

dismalaf• 7 months ago

Because they're already reneged on past promises. Trust is gone.

yjftsjthsd-h5• 7 months ago

New CEO says he's not going to remove adblockers, people suspect him for planning to remove adblockers.

New CEO says they've run the numbers and decided to not kill adblockers, leading to people asking why exactly they were running those numbers (if it was an actual ideological commitment, the numbers wouldn't matter).

Mozilla says they'll add a killswitch for all AI features (so that the tiny but vocal anti-AI minority will be happy), and people blame them for not having it as an enable-switch.

Yes, opt-in vs opt-out is kinda an important distinction. And you're assuming that opposition is a "tiny but vocal", which - especially among people bothering to use firefox - seems unfounded. Which brings use neatly to,

Whatever they do, they simply cannot win. I'm personally starting to suspect the main issue with Mozilla is its users.

Well, yes. If you build a userbase out of power users and folks who care about privacy and control... then you have a userbase of power users and folks who care about privacy and control. If Mozilla said up front that they were only interested in money and don't care about users, then fair enough, but don't go trumpeting how you fight for the user and then act surprised when the user holds you to that.

superkuh• 7 months ago

This seems like a cultural mismatch more than anything. Mozilla makes software that human people use and human people use normal language rather than avoiding the non-profitable aggravation associated with emotive language that a company employee might be used to.

Look at the point that op made instead of the tone: the AI feature should be opt-in not opt-out.

That's a good point. Let's talk about that. It seems like it's a simple thing to do to show good faith that this won't be a normal corporate AI push.

gldrk3• 7 months ago

It’s easy to bash Mozilla because it is failing. Their usage share is a statistical error, and most of it comes from being shipped with Ubuntu. Firefox badly needs a value proposition beyond not being Chromium-based.

bpt3• 7 months ago

Mozilla has lost the trust of its users by making decisions that their userbase doesn't approve of repeatedly, and then partially walking them back after the backlash.

That's not the fault of their users, at least not directly. If you want to argue that Firefox users are stifling innovation or trying to steer the product in a direction that would threaten the future viability of Firefox/Mozilla, I would be open to hearing that argument out even though I don't think that's the issue.

Mozilla is the equivalent of a petrostate in the tech sector. They have a bunch of revenue coming in that they didn't really earn, and they have no idea what to do with it to improve their current condition. To me, that's the core issue.

wtallis3• 7 months ago

Mozilla has a recurring problem with being unable to provide the simple, obvious right answer.

When they re-wrote Firefox for Android, they were unable to give the simple, obvious answer to the effect of "yes, we understand extensions are a core feature of our browser and we plan to fully support extensions on Fenix and won't consider it done until we do". Instead, they talked about whitelisting a handful of extensions, and took three years from shipping Fenix as stable before they had a broad open extension ecosystem up and running again.

Earlier this year Mozilla couldn't provide the simple, obvious response of "we will never sell your personal information". Instead, they tried to make excuses about not agreeing with California's definition of "selling personal information".

A few days ago, we find out that their new CEO can't clearly and emphatically say "we would never take money to break ad blockers, because that goes against everything we stand for".

Now, they seemingly can't even realize that having a "kill switch" calls into doubt whether they actually know what "opt-in" means.

Even when they're trying to do the right thing, they're strangely afraid to commit to doing the right thing when it comes to specifics. They won't say "never" even when it should be easy.

ramesh31• 7 months ago

Whatever they do, they simply cannot win. I'm personally starting to suspect the main issue with Mozilla is its users.

A lot of people remember the Mozilla of old, and are just completely depressed at the state of where it has ended up over the last 10 years. They were once a non-profit founded to promote the web and put users first. Now it's just this weird zombie company monetizing the work and good will of a prior generation of engineers that cared about that mission.

WhyOhWhyQ• 7 months ago

Sounds like robust criticism is having an effect. Why would you not be happy with the situation?

ivanmontillam2• 7 months ago

I am fine with it being a disable-button, as long it's persistent once set.

What I honestly fear is that while AI-features are disabled, popups inviting me to enable them again. That, or them auto-enabling them on every update like sometimes has happened with `browser.ml.enable` flag on `about:config`.

jamesgill3• 7 months ago

He didn't say he wasn't going to remove ad blockers; he said "I don't want to". No commitment or position, just a preference.

som• 7 months ago

Yep no doubt FF users cut from a slightly different cloth than those who choose GAMS browsers.

But as an old-school Firefox user, with a slieu of mobile extensions installed and a healthy cynicism about our swan dive into the dark sea of AI ... I have no problem at all with the statements from Mozilla. Outsiders can argue all day about intent, it's the actions that count.

nkrisc• 7 months ago

The fact they need to add an “AI kill switch” is the problem.

jm4• 7 months ago

The anti-AI people think they are in the majority. They could be, but I suspect that's not the case. I would be surprised if many in the anti-AI crowd could even point to the specific features of the devices and software they use daily that fall under the "AI" umbrella. Meanwhile, regular people are increasingly turning to chatbots instead of search engines. It seems clear we are at peak hype, but this stuff is here to stay.

lenerdenator• 7 months ago

When you have a position in the project called "CEO" and that person has the ability to hand down edicts of what he or she sees the project as being, that's when you get into trouble, especially in free software. We've seen this way of developing software co-opted by major companies who have turned otherwise good projects - Chromium and AOSP immediately come to mind - into vendor lock-in and spyware by some suit who has been told he needs to create value.

The thing they can do to win is to start acting like they maintain a free/libre open-source software project. It should be completely fine for Mozilla to make a grand total of $0.00 off of Firefox.

Think of Linux (specifically the kernel) or Python. Sure there's a person whose opinion holds more weight than everyone else's (at least for the kernel), but they typically focus on delivering general guidance to a group of people who are free to create features on their own and present those to leadership. If it's quality and fits what the general purpose of the project is, it gets merged into the trunk, and released with everything else.

That needs to be how Mozilla handles Firefox at this point. If some working group of contributors wants to start an implementation of GenAI in Firefox, let them do so and let the community hash it out. If the community doesn't feel the need to create it, well, then Firefox won't have it... and that's fine.

So many of these free software projects try to do too much and change what the core output of the project is in the process, and they lose sight of what the project is.

wkat42429• 7 months ago

New CEO says he's not going to remove adblockers, people suspect him for planning to remove adblockers

It's because he has obviously been thinking about it. That $150M number didn't just come out of nowhere. Someone at Mozilla modelled this. The resulting analysis made it into the CEO's mind so far he even mentioned it without being asked.

This is something that's unthinkable to most of the Mozilla users. That's why it's so shocking.

It's like your son making dinner conversation like "hey I was thinking, if I would sell drugs at school I'd make at least 500$ a week! But don't worry I'm not going to do that!".

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

Trust takes a lifetime to build, and a moment to break. Those “moments” are becoming more of streams of time these days.

How many times does a scorpion need to sting the frog for the frog to be justified in being wary of “ I definitely won’t sting you this time!”

nhinck3• 7 months ago

Have they come out and said what personal data they are selling yet? They were awfully guarded about what they were selling and to who.

I guess we shouldn't worry though, just some random law thought that what they were doing was "selling personal data" but we shouldn't think that it was. No further explanation required.

cons0le3• 7 months ago

Just saving this comment here for the future, so when he does it in 2 years I can come back and rub it in

binary132• 7 months ago

[flagged]

dblohm7• 7 months ago

If it gets taken seriously it would ship with an enable-AI button, not the other way round.

Like the one described in the subsequent toot?

All AI features will also be opt-in. I think there are some grey areas in what 'opt-in' means to different people (e.g. is a new toolbar button opt-in?)...

https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740500918701463

catapart4• 7 months ago

I was about to use a quote to show you that "no, it's not like what is described in the thread", but you included the salient bit in the second quote, yourself.

It's not a gray area, and "opt-in" isn't something to be weasled-worded around. If the browser has the capability, I don't want it. I want to be able to add it with a plugin, and that's it. Plugins should have full control to whatever is necessary (same as adblock stuff; plenty of security but enough "user beware" to allow truly useful utilities). And AI features should all be plugins. Separate ones, if I had my way, but bundles if that makes more sense. I do not and will not need AI to browse. It's an enhancement. The core product (or at least ONE OF the products offered) should allow me to do without the enhancement. And opt in if I want to. There's nothing gray there, and I'm so fucking sick of mozilla trying to pull this "we disagree with common terminology" horseshit.

marricks• 7 months ago

Literally every other browser and most tech companies are shoving AI down users throats. Firefox isn't missing the boat by neglecting AI, they're missing it by being an alternative which reminds us how nice things can be without it.

The past 15 years has been a slow decline while they were trying to prove some relevancy outside of their core product. With mobile browsers being locked down a decline was going to happen anyways but if they stuck to their guns at least they wouldn't have wasted a bunch of money and maintained more of their base.

Who knows, their position sucks, but they're not going to win anyone by being the worst AI focused browser which happens to have an off switch.

mindcrash• 7 months ago

The solution for the (as of yet) small group of people who cares about these things is very simple: community driven forks.

With the bonus that you also get a set of great (and per fork different yet handy) features.

These include:

Waterfox (Firefox) - https://www.waterfox.com/

Zen Browser (Firefox) - https://zen-browser.app/

Librewolf (Firefox) - https://librewolf.net/

Helium (Chrome/Chromium) - https://helium.computer/

Ungoogled Chromium (Chrome/Chromium) - https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

Also as one of the major players, Vivaldi already made a stand against AI and forcefully including (agentic) AI in the web browser: https://vivaldi.com/blog/keep-exploring/. It's a Chromium based browser with a lot of nice features and deep customization options: https://vivaldi.com/

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 7 months ago

No, it wouldn't. Because the average user might actually want the features, and if you default to "no" without asking people even once, the users who want it won't find it.

That's why it should ask - once. And offer a "FUCK OFF NEVER ASK ME AGAIN" button rather than "Ask me again later".

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

and if you default to "no" without asking people even once

I'm still waiting for the polls and statistics and feature requests of this. The "without asking" is the primary problem.

1vuio0pswjnm72• 7 months ago

Make it a compile-time option

   ./configure --disable-ai

dang• 7 months ago

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

azemetre2• 7 months ago

I thought this rule only applied to users commenting with each other, didn't know it applied to posted content too.

bhhaskin• 7 months ago

It should be a plugin. Anything that isn't directly related to the core mission of a web browser should be a plugin.

asadotzler4• 7 months ago

Browsers don't do plugins any more. Firefox hasn't had NPAPI for almost a decade.

jonathanstrange• 7 months ago

I can't imagine any reasonable use case for having AI tightly integrated into a browser (or an operating system, for what it's worth). Why not make a browser plugin or a web page or an app? I don't get it.

freehorse2• 7 months ago

Local translations?

koolala• 7 months ago

Is it just as easy to make an extension that runs a local AI translation model? Translation would benefit from having a community continuously updating and tuning local models for languages.

If it was an extension it would be nice if people could fork it with other models. Just like their AI Tab Grouping feature would be much better forked with a deterministic non-AI grouping system.

ooterness• 7 months ago

Sounds like a great plugin.

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

I had a translation extension for a good 2 years before it was built into FF

asadotzler4• 7 months ago

Local translation of websites so you don't have to tell Google about all the sites you want to read that are not in your language. Firefox's address bar that learns what you type most often and moves those items higher in the autocomplete list. There are plenty of great cases for AI very tightly integrated in the browser. That you haven't thought very hard about it or even bothered to see what AI Firefox has already had for ages (Awesomebar was about 15 years ago) is precisely why you don't "get it."

BoredPositron• 7 months ago

The problem with the "Trust me bro." stuff is that it only works if you are trusted and after the last decade Mozilla is anything but.

vlowther• 7 months ago

None of the big browsers can be trusted at this point. Firefox is at best the least worst out of the big cross platform browsers.

samschooler2• 7 months ago

I'm going to chime in here, I think 1. This is great and Mozilla is listening to it's core fans and 2. I want Firefox to be a competitive browser. Without AI enabled features + agent mode being first class citizens, this will be a non-starter in 2 years.

I want my non-tech family members/friends to install Firefox not because I come over at Christmas, but because they want to. Because it's a browser that "just works." We can't have this if Firefox stays in the pre-ai era.

I know Mozilla doesn't have much good will right now, but hopefully with the exec shakeup, they will right the ship on making FF a great browser. While still staying the best foil to Chrome (both in browser engine, browser chrome, and extension ecosystem).

gigel822• 7 months ago

I'd love to live in your world for a bit... I can't imagine any future where having AI in your browser is a net positive for any user. It sounds like an absolute dystopian privacy and security nightmare.

afavour• 7 months ago

Most users are entirely ignorant of privacy and security and will make choices without considering it. I don’t say that to excuse it but it’s absolutely the reality.

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 7 months ago

Why?

Imagine you have an AI button. When you click it, the locally running LLM gets a copy of the web site in the context window, and you get to ask it a prompt, e.g. "summarize this".

Imagine the browser asks you at some point, whether you want to hear about new features. The buttons offered to you are "FUCK OFF AND NEVER, EVER BOTHER ME AGAIN", "Please show me a summary once a month", "Show timely, non-modal notifications at appropriate times".

Imagine you choose the second option, and at some point, it offers you a feature described as follows: "On search engine result pages and social media sites, use a local LLM to identify headlines, classify them as clickbait-or-not, and for clickbait headlines, automatically fetch the article in an incognito session, and add a small overlay with a non-clickbait version of the title". Would you enable it?

cvoss• 7 months ago

any future
any user

knowitnone3• 7 months ago

I don't know. What if the AI can remove all junk from the page, clean it up, and only leave the content - sort of like ublock origin on steroids?

doctorpangloss• 7 months ago

haha, what if I told you that the currently existing, shipping product, "ChatGPT / Gemini uses a browser for you" will have more users than Firefox in two years? I will even bet you that will likely be the case in 2 months.

andrepd2• 7 months ago

Without AI enabled features + agent mode being first class citizens, this will be a non-starter in 2 years.

The confidence with which people say these things...

s/AI/NFT and I've heard this exact sentence many times before.

AuthAuth7• 7 months ago

NFT was always a meme and crypto has proven its staying power.

sethops1• 7 months ago

Hacker News was borderline insufferable during the 2022/23 NFT craze when all the startups, investments, and headlines were going into whatever new disruption NFTs/blockchain were allegedly going to cause.

At least with AI I do get some value out of asking Gemini questions. But I hardly need or want my web browser to be a chatbot interface.

wvenable9• 7 months ago

Comparing LLMs to NFT isn't fair. Being able to talk to you computer and have it understand you and even do the things you ask is literally StarTrek technology.

I've never seen a technology so advanced be so dismissed before.

lawtalkinghuman5• 7 months ago

The metaverse is clearly the future. Zuckerberg said so, after all.

Browsers without metaverse integration will be a non-starter.

MisterTea3• 7 months ago

this will be a non-starter in 2 years.

Why though? Seriously.

sigmar2• 7 months ago

Do you ever need a website you're visiting translated?

Have you ever not understood a term or phrase on a website and had to go to wikipedia/urbandictionary/google to explain it?

Have you ever wanted to do a 'fuzzy search' of a 300 page document (where you don't know the exact string of text to ctrl-f, but want to see where they talk about a particular topic)?

wkat42429• 7 months ago

Yeah, most of the browsers "with AI" are not existing because they're so incredibly useful. They're there because it's a hype, because their parent companies have invested billions and they need to show their shareholders it's actually being used by people. So they ram it in our faces, left right and center. They're not doing this to help us, they're helping themselves.

Mozilla doesn't need to play that game because they're not selling any AI.

throwaway613745• 7 months ago

Because the future and market is certain, don’t you know?

brokencode4• 7 months ago

I totally agree. It’s just going to become an expectation that AI is in the browser.

It’s so nice just to be able to ask the browser to summarize the page, or ask questions about a long article.

I know a lot of people on Hacker News are hostile to AI and like to imagine everybody hates it, but I personally find it very helpful.

bayindirh8• 7 months ago

Considering pirating the whole internet and boiling the planet is required to summarize a single page in a mediocre manner, it’s understandable that people who knows how the sausages are made are against it.

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

but I personally find it very helpful.

Options are nice. They were (and poteitally will) not making it optional and if people like me weren't "hostile to Ai" they wouldn't have had to back-track with this.

kgwxd2• 7 months ago

then you can install an extension.

protocolture13• 7 months ago

It’s just going to become an expectation that AI is in the browser.

Why? Is there evidence to back this up? Are there massive customer write in campaigns trying to convince browser companies to push more AI?

I know a lot of people on Hacker News are hostile to AI and like to imagine everybody hates it, but I personally find it very helpful.

I love it. I love going to the AI place and knowingly consulting the AI for tasks I want the AI to perform. That relationship is healthy and responsible. It doesnt need to be in everything else. Its like those old jokes about how inventions are just <existing invention> + <digital clock>.

I dont need AI on the desktop, in microsoft office, replying to me on facebook, responding to my google searches AND doing shit in my browser. One of these would be too much, because I can just access the AI I want to speak to whenever I want it. Any 2 of these is such substantial overkill. Why do we have all of them? Justify it. Is there a user story where a user was trying to complete a task but lacked 97% accurate information from 5 different sources to complete the task?

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

Without AI enabled features + agent mode being first class citizens, this will be a non-starter in 2 years.

I want an application to serve me webpages and manage said webpages. It wasn't a "non-starter" for me 2 years ago when I switched off Chrome who chose to be too user hostile to ignore. It won't be a non-starter here.

I want my non-tech family members/friends to install Firefox not because I come over at Christmas, but because they want to. Because it's a browser that "just works." We can't have this if Firefox stays in the pre-ai era.

If "it just works" is all my non-tech family needs, I'm not really gonna intervene and evangelize for Mozilla. I don't work for them (if you do, that's fair). Most browsers "just work" so mission accomplished. These are parents who were fine paying Hulu $15/month to still see ads, so we simply have different views. I'm sure they felt the same way about my pots falling apart and insisting "well, they still work".

Meanwhile, my professional and personal career revolves around the internet, and I don't want to be fighting my screwdriver because it wants to pretend to be a drill. At some point I will throw the drill out and buy a screwdriver that screws.

godelski16• 7 months ago

If you want to be a power user, then be a power user. Switch to a fork like Mullvad or Waterfox.

Seriously, I don't get the problem here. I don't want AI in my browser either, but it is pretty simple for us who care to switch away. It's even easy for those who aren't technically skilled!

If this is what stops Firefox from drowning then I'm all for it. They are our last line of defense from a Google controlled internet. What Firefox puts in their browser isn't that critical to me (i.e. doesn't affect me) as long as it stays open source and there are forks. But Firefox dying does! So yeah, I'm gonna root for Firefox even when it does things I don't want because what I care about far more than any specific browser feature is the internet not being controlled by any single entity.

So can we make sure we're fighting the right battles?

protocolture13• 7 months ago

Because it's a browser that "just works." We can't have this if Firefox stays in the pre-ai era.

Strongly disagree.

Theres no expectation of AI as a core browsing experience. There isnt even really an expectation of AI as part of an extended browsing experience. We cant even predict reliably what AI's relationship to browsing will be if it is even to exist. Mozilla could reliably wait 24 months and follow if features are actually in demand and being used.

Firefox can absolutely maintain "It just works" by being a good platform with well tested in demand features.

What they are talking about here, are opt out only experiments intruding on the core browsing experience. Thats the opposite of "It Just Works".

I know Mozilla doesn't have much good will right now, but hopefully with the exec shakeup, they will right the ship on making FF a great browser.

Its already a great browser. It doesnt need a built in opt out AI experience to become great.

mcny• 7 months ago

There was also no expectation of process isolation in Mozilla Firefox when Google Chrome first came into the scenes. Electrolysis was painful for Mozilla and yet it was necessary.

Izkata• 7 months ago

Mozilla could reliably wait 24 months and follow if features are actually in demand and being used.

I'm also wondering how much of what they come up with could be implemented as an addon instead of a core part of the browser.

charcircuit5• 7 months ago

This is how Firefox fell behind Chrome and bled their entire market share. The strategy of letting Chrome out innovate them and then copy what they think is good is not a strategy that works.

heavyset_go8• 7 months ago

The absolute reactionary response to anything Mozilla does is quite the something to watch, I've never seen another company held to the same standards.

If you read the Mozilla and Firefox related threads over the past week, you'd think Mozilla was the scourge of the internet, worse than DoubleClick in their heyday and worse than Google's hobbling of Chrome.

That said, the AI options for Firefox are opt-in. If you don't want them, don't use them. You are correct in that this is where software is heading, and AI integration is what users will expect going forward.

1gn15• 7 months ago

Just so everyone else knows, the complaining is by definition reactionary.

In politics, a reactionary is a person who favors a return to a previous state of society which they believe possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary society.

But I guess HackerNews is infamous for being conservative, so it's not too surprising.

thisislife23• 7 months ago

I've never seen another company held to the same standards.

The only "standard" expected from them is the same as any other for-profit company - "stick to your stated values and don't be duplicitous". For example, Apple, Meta, Microsoft are all lambasted here when they claim to "respect" user privacy and their products do the opposite.

Also, you should note that unlike these BiGTech that make multiple products and services, the company behind Firefox (and Thunderbird) makes only a few products and earns 100's of millions of dollars in annual revenue from it (some here in HN say they currently make more than a half a billion dollars a year now!). That's a lot of money. And yet, most of their products continues to be "shitty" (i.e. subpar). That's why they are losing user base. Instead of really improving their core product, the company just continues to seek new avenues of creating revenues. That's the "MBA CEO mindset" that everyone here in HN usually complain about. Do you want a browser that's faster and light on resources, or a browser that would display even more ads to you right in the browser? (Guess what Firefox prioritised?). Every user of Firefox can already avail ChatGPT (or some other AI service) if they want to. The only reason to embed it onto Firefox is to just make extra money by violating user privacy (we all know AIs are now personal data harvesters), without adding any real value to the browser.

Now, consider the opensource philosophy they espouse. Again, with the 100's of millions of dollars they have in hand, Gecko, the rendering engine of the browser is still not a truly modular piece of code that can be easily used in other projects. And that's by design (this is why most of the browsers that use the Firefox-Gecko codebase are just Firefox clones with superficial changes to the UI and config). If I remember right, Nokia spent considerable effort to try and reuse Gecko (make it modular?) - https://web.archive.org/web/20180830103541/http://blog.idemp... - and Sailfish OS now uses that fork in its mobile browser. (It was only when Mozilla feared that they were losing the mobile browser war that they decided to offer Gecko as a hacky modular codebase for only the Android platform, to be used as webviews or create other browsers. Similar options for Desktop platforms still don't exist).

Isn't all that a valid criticism, whether you are a capitalist or an opensource developer?

Melatonic• 7 months ago

Why does the browser itself need AI features ?

You can still easily visit chagpt via web if Gemini or whatever

vaylian2• 7 months ago

It's obvious to you. But many people will think that Firefox doesn't support (accessing) AI unless that feature is prominently displayed.

Most people don't understand how the web works.

klardotsh• 7 months ago

Fully disagree. I use zero so-called "AI" features in my day to day life. None. Not one. Why do I need them in my browser, and why does my browser need to focus on something that, several years into the hype wave, I still *do not use at all*? And it's not for a lack of trying, the results are just not what I need or want, and traditional browsing (and search engines, etc.) does do what I want.

I'd be elated if Firefox solely focused on "the pre-AI era", as you put it, and many other power users would, too. And I somehow doubt my non-techie family cares - if anything, they're tired of seeing the stupid sparkle icons crammed down their throats at every single corner of the world now.

wvenable9• 7 months ago

I use zero so-called "AI" features in my day to day life. None. Not one.

I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones.

I recently listened to a podcast (probably The Verge) talking about how an author was suddenly getting more purchases from his personal website. He attributed it to AI chatbots giving his personal website as the best place to buy rather than Amazon, etc. An AI browser might be a way to take power away from all the big players.

And it's not for a lack of trying, the results are just not what I need or want, and traditional browsing (and search engines, etc.) does do what I want.

I suspect I only Google for about 1/4 of things I used to (maybe less). Why search, wade through dubious results, etc when you can just instantly get the result you want in the format you want it?

While I am a techie and I do use Firefox -- that's not a growing niche. I think AI will become spectacularly better for non-techies because it can simply give them what they ask for. LLMs have solved the natural language query issue.

zwnow• 7 months ago

I agree, why support pushing the masses into another big tech machinery that just rips off their data and collectively makes it worse for all of us again? We are already way too cool with people frying their brains on X, TikTok, Instagram and whatnot. If anything, as devs, we should help people get back to focus on their own lifes over monetization of attentionspans. But this industry has no backbone and is constantly letting people down for a quick buck.

Spacecosmonaut• 7 months ago

AI tools are here to stay. They will start to creep into everything, everywhere, all the time. Either you recognize the moment at which it becomes a significant disadvantage not to use them (I agree that moment is not now), or get left behind.

PurpleRamen7• 7 months ago

There are many features you are not using in all your software. Just being there, should not be a problem for people. You should evaluate a software by what it's giving you, and which harm it brings, not by what it's giving others you do not care about.

And so far, we can assume that AI in Firefox will be like all the other stuff people don't care about, just optional, a button here, a menu-entry there, just waiting for interaction, but not harmful.

chickenimprint• 7 months ago

You never translate any websites?

nektro2• 7 months ago

Without AI enabled features + agent mode being first class citizens, this will be a non-starter in 2 years.

LOL

nottorp• 7 months ago

1. This is great and Mozilla is listening to it's core fans

It's not great. Great would be "we'll stop wasting money on extraneous features and we'll concentrate on making Firefox the best browser".

This is damage control.

andai• 7 months ago

At this point they should just bring back Eich and go fully trad ;)

chironjit• 7 months ago

I'm surprised your take is so controversial. This really is it - yes, the current core users are not interested in AI but most people in our lives who are not techies do use them, and Firefox needs win these users if it wants to stay relevant.

Of course, I have opinions on other ways it could make money instead of jumping on the latest hot thing (pocket, fakespot, VPN, etc) without actually truly building the ecosystem but at least they are trying.

m4rtink4• 7 months ago

Yeah, that's like having a browser without without support for blockchain, semantic web or UML! No one would use it without these absolutely critical features!

tgv• 7 months ago

Lots of disagreement, but from necessity I (sort of) agree. Firefox foremost needs users. If it takes AI features to get them, so be it. However, Firefox cannot afford to lose its loyal user base, so they have to be optional.

samschooler2• 7 months ago

Honestly if it were up to me, yes I'd love Firefox to stay in the niche, but they have to follow the market if they want to stay relevant. I just hope they can push more adoption.

frm88• 7 months ago

I am highly sceptical of all AI features and it seems Gardner and other cyber security experts are starting to wake up as well:

The programs let you outsource and automate tasks, such as online searches or writing an email, to an AI agent. The only problem is that these same AI capabilities can be tricked into executing malicious commands hidden in websites or emails, effectively turning the browser against the user.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/security-experts-warn-companies-t...

For now this is restricted to Perplexity Comet and OpenAI Atlas and only the UK has issued an official warning, but why would I, personally, want my Firefox browser with an opt-out risk instead of an opt-in?

fhd2• 7 months ago

I think the core of the issue is that Mozilla is thinking big. They're not happy to service a niche well (which the majority of the comments on Mozilla related posts is generally asking them to), they want to get back to their glory days, capture the mainstream.

And that is tough. Chrome won because it was an, at the time, superior product, AND because it had an insane marketing push. I remember how it was just everywhere. Every other installer pushed Chrome on you, as well as all the Google properties, it was all over the (tech) news, shaping new standards aggressively etc. Not something Mozilla can match.

But they just won't give up. I don't know if I should applaud that or not, but I think it's probably the core of the disconnect between Mozilla and the tech community. They desperately want to break into the mainstream again, their most vocal supporters want them to get a reality check on their ambitions.

If I was running Mozilla, I'd probably go for the niche. It's less glamorous, but servicing a niche is relatively easy, all you have to do is listen to users and focus on stuff they want and/or need. You generally get enough loyalty to be able to move a bit behind the curve, see what works for others first, then do your own version once it's clear how it'll be valuable to the user base. I'd give this strategy the highest chance of long term survival and impact.

Mainstream is way tougher. You kinda need to make all kinds of people with different needs happy enough, and get ahead of where those wants and needs are going.

One could argue they could do both: Serve a niche well with Firefox and try to reach the mainstream with other products. I think to some degree they've tried it, with mixed results.

tliltocatl11• 7 months ago

The mainstream didn't get mainstream by striving to go with mainstream. They got there by serving a niche well and then expanding the niche. Trying to go mainstream without having a niche moat will make you lag behind the establishment endlessly.

I'm not an Apple fan (rather an Apple hater if you would), but they are a perfect example of this. First, have a top quality niche product, then go into the big waters with the vision you got from the niche - and then people will actually be willing to give up bells and whistles the product that is good enough.

Mozilla have a well-established niche with a vision, but they can't monetize without giving up the vision they have (and apparently consider opening for small direct donations or maybe even direct bug/feature crowdsourcing not worth it). So they keep jumping on every sidetrack. And keep losing even the niche they have.

viktorcode• 7 months ago

The difference between this and "will have an option to enable AI features" shows what the development resources will be focused on. I mean, f** JPEG XL support; we have a bigger investment fish to fry

t1234s• 7 months ago

Is there a fork of firefox where you have all the same core functionality and support for extensions but with all the mozilla services (pocket, safe browsing, forced crap on the new tab page, any AI service, etc...) removed?

Quot• 7 months ago

My preference is Zen (https://zen-browser.app/), but there's also LibreWolf (https://librewolf.net/) if you want a less customized fork.

moderation• 7 months ago

I moved to Zen but have subsequently moved to Glide [0] which I find to have less UI fluff and the keyboard shortcuts and scriptability are excellent.

0. https://glide-browser.app/

Saris2• 7 months ago

Zen, Waterfox, Librewolf, Floorp.. For android there's Fennec, Iceraven.

There are more, those are just the ones I can recall.

baobun4• 7 months ago

Zen and Floorp are not obvious improvements from a privacy and control perspective.

Waterfox, Librewolf and Mullvad Browser are worth considering.

rjdj377dhabsn• 7 months ago

For Android, Ironfox is currently the best option IMO.

Loudergood• 7 months ago

Pocket has been gone for awhile now. Is it really that hard to uncheck some boxes to turn this all off?

thisislife23• 7 months ago

Tor Browser, Mullvad Browser and PaleMoon browser (a modern browser, though it doesn't support webextensions).

AuthAuth7• 7 months ago

I'm glad to see some mozilla employees standing their base in the comments. That guy trying to make the point that Mozilla was wasting resources chasing trend only for an employee to say it was a few people checking it out while 1000 people continued work on the normal stuff is nice to see.

The non mozilla people in that thread are so petty. Maybe it'd be better to have them go use another browser and stop dragging down firefox's reputation.

vaylian2• 7 months ago

Can you point to some of these comments?

veeti• 7 months ago

People on Mastodon being insufferable, say it ain't so

butz2• 7 months ago

Firefox should release a separate build - "base", "core", "classic" - clearly, I am not a marketing person, but idea behind it, that this is only a browser without any extra features added. No "AI", no studies, no account sync. Only bare minimum browser, that allows user to do their internet things and, if they ever desire, will install all extra bells and whistles as extensions. No need to agree to any EULA either (remember, that it was added to Firefox?). And, the best part, all existing users will still keep using the same old Firefox version, no surprises for them. Now, I assume that someone will tell me, that this version already exists and is called ESR :)

bondarchuk2• 7 months ago

For example at the moment multi-account containers is a plugin. I needed it and installed the plugin and it's fine.

netule• 7 months ago

It kind of sucks that this isn’t a core feature of the browser, but the AI stuff will be. At least Firefox sync is good enough to sync extensions.

yjftsjthsd-h5• 7 months ago

I'm pretty sure ESR is a different thing, but yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I think it even should be relatively easy, insofar as that a lot of the non-base functionality is in built-in extensions?

driverdan• 7 months ago

Firefox should be a browser, period. It should render pages. All other features should be extensions.

GaryBluto• 7 months ago

That would've been possible if they didn't kill XUL.

braiamp2• 7 months ago

If Firefox is just a browser, it will not get any money.

crossroadsguy• 7 months ago

There are two things to note here:

1. Pocket/etc is not even ancient history,

2. At this point I don’t think Firefox or Mozilla ought to be taken without a truck of salt.

A bonus third :D

3. People bleeding their hearts out for Mozilla and calling others out for constantly criticising Mozilla — it’s history baby, history!

squigz• 7 months ago

I'll never understand why people feel so strongly about features like this and that they have to be opt-in.

I don't use bookmarks. Should those be opt-in? What about the other 85% of the browser's features I don't use?

baobun4• 7 months ago

The bookmarks feature doesn't silently connect to their servers in the background to function.

The supposed local-only features like translations will download at least model updates and configuration, which leaks metadata.

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

I don't use bookmarks. Should those be opt-in?

You can choose not to use bookmarks, remove the bar reserved for it, and it’s taking up kilobytes in the background. Can’t say the same about shoving an LLM in a browser.

But sure, I’m much closer to the extreme of “make bookmarks a plug-in” than “make everything a default”.

BeetleB5• 7 months ago

Could someone summarize the problem with Firefox's AI features?

At least when I last checked (months ago), none of those features that involve communicating with external servers would work unless you configure them to (i.e. provide credentials to an LLM provider).

Was I wrong? Have things changed?

ksherlock• 7 months ago

I don't use firefox so I can't confirm, but one issue might be 15+ (?!) different config settings needed to disable AI and it still won't go away.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46095873

BeetleB5• 7 months ago

That's a UX issue, but I keep hearing complaints about privacy.

baobun4• 7 months ago

What was your methodology in checking? I got different results using a local mitmproxy on a clean install.

https://sizeof.cat/post/web-browser-telemetry-2025-edition/

BeetleB5• 7 months ago

Thanks for the link - I see it's not that much more than Waterfox.

Getting to the discussion at hand, which of those pings are AI related? I didn't say FF isn't making network calls.

9999000009994• 7 months ago

Have it as a stand alone plugin.

I should have to manually install this AI stuff.

kotaKat• 7 months ago

This. My browser should be a browser and nothing more. If I want more, I should be able to use an add-on. Stop baking everything in out of the box.

worldsavior• 7 months ago

You're not a normal user of Firefox then.

9999000009994• 7 months ago

Who is a "normal" user.

Normal users install Chrome.

ivan_gammel• 7 months ago

Normal users will be fine if they will see two big squares side by side as an installation step: „with AI“ and „without AI“, where the former will just install and enable the plugin. Explicit choice is better than opt-out, and it’s not going to be something people frequently change their mind about, so another switch can be buried in settings.

azemetre2• 7 months ago

Firefox has <5% of browser share, no one is a normal user of firefox.

dietr1ch• 7 months ago

The team (AND Marketing) should focus on saying it's a fast core browser with the extensions you want to make it yours.

Have recommended extension sets ([uBlock, Sponsorblock], [Containerise, Sideberry, Decentraleyes], [AI translation + Dictionary/Thesaurus]).

Make me want to use your AI features, don't just slap them on my face wishing I'll do more than get mad and try to get rid of them.

Tempest19812• 7 months ago

Forcing everything into a plug-in is architecturally more complex, and less performant... I'm imagining proxying from native code through JavaScript APIs, then back to native code for LLM operations and context storage. But might lead to creation of some new AI extension APIs.

9999000009994• 7 months ago

Then ship a FireFoxAI browser for users who want it.

Forcing everyone to by default use AI isn't freedom. I might as well just use Chrome.

RunSet2• 7 months ago

Language models are not like the Classic Theme, which can be relegated to an extension (now defunct).

Language models are like Hello, Pocket, and Sync. Core browser features one and all that must silently run by default unless explicitly disabled.

sfRattan• 7 months ago

Sync is the only feature you listed which is arguably a core feature, in that it makes sense to build into the browser to be able to sync as much of the browser's settings and data as possible for the user. Everything else --- Hello, Pocket, and LLMs --- can and should sink or swim as extensions which the user must seek out and install if they provide sufficient value.

tjpnz2• 7 months ago

You won't find much relating to Pocket or Hello in the OSS project. I predict a lot of the new AI functionality will stay out too. So not core functionality.

unethical_ban• 7 months ago

I should have to manually install this bookmarks stuff.

I should have to manually install this search bar stuff.

I should have to manually install this FTP client stuff (okay that last one is the case)

alexgotoi2• 7 months ago

This is exactly the kind of boring, unsexy feature that actually builds trust. It’s the opposite of the usual “surprise, here’s an AI sidebar you didn’t ask for and can’t fully disable” pattern. If they want people to try this stuff, the path is pretty simple: ship a browser that treats AI like any other power feature. Off by default, clearly explained, reversible, and preferably shippable as an extension. You can always market your way into more usage; you can’t market your way back into credibility once you blow it.

bstsb• 7 months ago

saying "trying to slow down, I promise" doesn't magically make your blatant advert not spam

edit: the original post ended with words to the tune of "Totally unrelated, but I run [insert newsletter here]... "

alexgotoi2• 7 months ago

Edited and removed.

RunSet2• 7 months ago

This is exactly the kind of boring, unsexy feature that actually builds trust.

Though not so much trust as an option to enable AI features would build.

taurath• 7 months ago

It’s the opposite of the usual “surprise, here’s an AI sidebar you didn’t ask for and can’t fully disable” pattern.

They literally shipped an AI sidebar nobody asked for.

teaearlgraycold• 7 months ago

I find it a nice feature.

troupo2• 7 months ago

The trust is built by not enabling this by default, and by not burying the "kill switch" somewhere in settings that non-power users will never find.

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

Worse yet, burying in settings where they give a big disclaimer that they can (and often are) reset when the browser updates.

bayindirh8• 7 months ago

Currently disable switch is right next to AI chat bot settings. It’s pretty on your face.

BloondAndDoom• 7 months ago

My problem here is this; products are designed with a vision. If you are designing with 2-3 visions it won’t be that good, if you design with one vision (AI) then non-AI version of the product will be an after thought. This tells me non-AI version of it will suffer (IMHO)

wkat42429• 7 months ago

I don't agree. I think opinionated design products are much worse in general.

It's really great when your opinions are aligned with those of the designer. If they're not, you're straight out of luck and you're stuck with something that isn't really for you.

This is why I love software that gives as much choice as possible. Like KDE for example. Because I have pretty strong vision myself and I respect my tools to conform to that, not the other way around

nateb2022• 7 months ago

if you design with one vision (AI) then non-AI version of the product will be an after thought

That’s like saying if a car manufacturer adds a "Sport Mode", the steering wheel and brakes suddenly become an afterthought.

Being AI-available means we'll welcome more Firefox users who would otherwise choose a different browser. Being AI-optional means we won't alienate the anti-AI crowd. Why not embrace both?

1vuio0pswjnm72• 7 months ago

It is well-known as a result of the expert reports in US v Google that generally software users do not change defaults

Whereas providing an option or a setting that the user must locate and change doesn't really mean much. Few users will ever see it let alone decide to change it

For example, why pay 22 billion to be "the default" if users can just change the default setting

LexiMax• 7 months ago

Mozilla is certainly paddling upstream. Of all of the AI-integrated apps and sites that I'm subjected to, I can think of exactly two where it wasn't obnoxious and a pain in the neck to disable.

Kagi. Zed. That's it, that's the list.

mort963• 7 months ago

I still don't want to use an "AI browser". I don't want to use a browser where all or most development effort goes into "AI features" that I need to disable. I want a browser where the development effort goes into making it better at browsing the web.

micromacrofoot• 7 months ago

I'm not sure why people still believe this, especially developers. We're starting to literally just build AI into everything... you're not even going to know what's AI and what's not. The phase of labeling everything with cute little sparkles is starting to end and AI is going to be used similarly to external libraries.

If you don't like AI you need to seek legislation and pressure your local politicians. It's the only way to stop it.

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

If you don't like AI you need to seek legislation and pressure your local politicians. It's the only way to stop it.

Yup. So we're screwed for up to 3 years. Maybe much less depending on nature or the result of certain hot topic issues.

That might be a minor factor why we seem to be speedrunning everything in 2025. Get ahead of the crash, of the legislation, of the wool coming off the common citizen's eyes.

Tepix• 7 months ago

I don't understand why it's so difficult (impossible?) with Firefox to use your own private AI server (that's not running on localhost). With Brave it's pretty easy.

leothetechguy• 7 months ago

Honestly this should've been introduced with the new AI Features from the start, it's just shipping slightly too late to fully regain my trust.

oybng• 7 months ago

Firefox had options for many things, until those options were removed

VortexLain2• 7 months ago

This would be useful for many people who want to avoid AI features being forced on them by every piece of software imaginable. Hopefully, a centralized kill switch like this will also make it easy for Firefox forks such as Zen and Floorp to let users enable AI features if they want to without changing about:flags.

rolph• 7 months ago

get your non AI versions here while they last:

Index of /pub/firefox/releases/

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/

A LITTLE HELP:

How do I revert Firefox to a previous version and keep my profile intact?

https://superuser.com/questions/1643618/how-do-i-revert-fire...

wkat42429• 7 months ago

I don't really care so much about that. I worry more about the CEO speaking about blocking adblockers like it's a normal business decision. Wtf

johnnyanmac26• 7 months ago

That’s what turned me off of Chrome. It will 100% have me migrate if it happens again. I’m not freely giving my attention away for even more people to shove crap in my face.

kgwxd2• 7 months ago

i don't even want the code present on my machine, only being held back by a checkbox that may or may not be correctly respected. this is what extensions we invented for.

4k93n2• 7 months ago

its funny how multi-account containers is a such a killer feature of firefox (that none of the other browsers are able to implement, as far as i remember) but its kept as an extension and they never seem too bothered about promoting it either

mwkaufma• 7 months ago

Where's the kill switch to remove AI from development?

Timwi• 7 months ago

I actually saw the “summarize this page” feature in the right-click menu today and clicked on it out of curiosity. The box that appeared had a “remove AI features” button which I accidentally clicked. Now the feature is completely gone and I don't know how to get it back. (Don't really care much, wasn't planning on using that feature anyway, just giving feedback on my first impression)

zelphirkalt• 7 months ago

How about we don't enable AI features by default in the first place?

BeaverGoose• 7 months ago

I would pay $100 a year for a Firefox that just focused on privacy and was competitive speed and features (at rendering) with chrome.

kilroy123• 7 months ago

Perhaps, but I would guess 99% of what few users they still have would not do this.

This leaves Mozilla in a tough spot of taking its main competitors' cash instead.

geekamongus• 7 months ago

Oh, this is great news!

Madmallard• 7 months ago

Doesn't matter?

https://youtube.com/shorts/FObvkFtr2ZU?si=U6fCphjmGcNMb5ac

Until they change this back they are not trustworthy at all.

est• 7 months ago

I am out of the loop, but what AI features does Firefox offer these days?

gooob2• 7 months ago

what i hate most about this (and the discussion happening in the comments), is that nobody is even defining "AI". "artificial intelligence" is not a technical term. what is mozzila doing exactly? what does it mean to put AI in the browser?

hollerith2• 7 months ago

There is kind of software that is created using techniques very different from the techniques used to create the vast majority of socioeconomically-important software until about 4 years ago. We need a name for this thing that definitely exists in reality and definitely differs from software created the traditional way. That name is AI. We're probably going to keep on calling it that even if lots of people protest that having "intelligence" in the name is misleading or erroneous.

nektro2• 7 months ago

after the disaster of comms from the new ceo, this is really great to see.

CodeCompost• 7 months ago

Can we please stop calling LLMs "AI"? It's obvious now that there is no intelligence here and no trying to make it talk to itself and call is "reasoning" is not the answer.

TonyStr• 7 months ago

Nope, it's too late. It sounded stupid when they called it AI in the start, but now AI means something like "tools that can perform tasks that typically requires human faculties to complete". Just like a computer does more than compute, words change meaning, sometimes influenced by marketing.

tliltocatl11• 7 months ago

I think people screaming "but AI is the future" doesn't recognize what the problem is. The problem is not AI. The problem is that Mozilla keeps jumping on fads instead of focusing on their browser core. There are a tons of "we bundled all the latest crap" Chrome forks out there. Nobody needs more those. Stop pushing bells and whistles. Give us more extensibility instead. Keep supporting v2 manifest and add more. There were genuine technical reasons for why XUL and NPAPI had to die, but we need an equally powerful alternative.

And yea, having a faint through about removing adblock support, yet alone speaking it aloud is a really bad sign for Mozilla's future.

echelon• 7 months ago

people screaming "but AI is the future"

I witnes far more people screaming against AI.

The media started kicking this off in 2021, 2022. It blossomed into a fully distributed, organic, memetic device from there. It has a life of its own now.

Children and young people are practically indoctrinated if you look at social media comments.

I was invited to give lectures to several art schools about using Blender, Unreal Engine, and mocap software with diffusion models. The students weren't very polite. Most of the "questions" I got at each of the campuses were simply statements of affirmation about how much they hate AI.

Good looking and well-reviewed indie games that incorporate AI elements or tools are dumped on by these folks. It's like butting into conversations to say something bad about AI scores points or something.

Mozilla keeps jumping on fads

Agreed on this point, though. They're rudderless. And Google is probably quite happy about the fact that their antitrust litigation sponge can't steal away their users.

epgui• 7 months ago

simply statements of affirmation about how much they hate AI

I wonder what that might mean!

tliltocatl11• 7 months ago

If you keep shoveling a thing to people who don't care, you'll get tons of irrational pushback no matter how the good this thing is. And AI isn't even particularly good.

ehnto2• 7 months ago

There is a clear substance behind the pushback on AI in creative work, and it would be foolish to dismiss it as irrational. You might be missing the forest for the trees if you focus too much in implementation details, the dislike for is AI is a bit deeper than that.

PunchyHamster• 7 months ago

I witnes far more people screaming against AI.

If you shove it into people's faces, they will have knee jerk reaction and hate it.

If the AI industry didn't desperately try to push it in every possible way in desperate bid to be profitable and it was just a thing that slowly gets better and is value added, not a nagging push, there would be far less of that.

But companies like MS have idea of consent of average rapist and will not even give option "no, I don't want copilot in teams", there is only "add it now" or "remind later"

diputsmonro• 7 months ago

I wonder why nobody wants to use my pretty theft machine? I mean, it steals all their work and spits out copies that are almost as good, and almost for free! Why aren't these artists stoked about not having to do art anymore?

Well, I guess it does use more energy than every existing data center, driving up costs for basic electronic components and thereby making every electronic device more expensive.

And I guess the results aren't quite as good, but if you squint and don't really care about art on a human level and just want to clap like a seal at the pretty pictures then it's enough.

And I guess economic forces will mean that some of them will lose their jobs when their bosses realize that they can get away with only needing half as many prompt artists.

But hey, at least we don't have to pay humans to make art anymore. How glorious that our Silicon Valley gods have delivered us from the hell of creating economic incentives for humans to express themselves to other humans.

Yeah, those screaming, "indoctrinated" artists are so impolite and crazy, aren't they? Don't they realize what we've done for them? We made the automatic art machine! They'll never get to make art again!

mrweasel• 7 months ago

It might open up for a terrifying level of abuse, but if you can have Dtrace and eBPF implemented in the Linux kernel, you can surely design an API for allowing AIs to be plug-able within Firefox.

Firefox is already a really good browser, Mozilla really should be focusing on that. They can design and implement an AI plugin system to go into that core. People who want AI can install an agent and enable the AI sub-system. If the AI companies won't implement it, Mozilla can do it and charge a fee for the plugin.

PurpleRamen7• 7 months ago

The problem is that Mozilla keeps jumping on fads instead of focusing on their browser core.

They always did, everyone does. This is not really new, and not really that harmful in itself. The deeper problem is that you need developers who are also understanding what they are doing, what people want and need, developers who are nerdy about some topic and very deep into their understanding of it. But Mozilla seems to lack this, which is also why they have to follow every fad blindly, because they just don't know it better, have no real vision and understanding which enables them to build something really worthful. Mozilla seems to be the embodiment of what happens when you have a task and your solution is to just throw money at it until something works.

And let's be fair, it is easy to be good at something, but really hard to master it and dominate the world. It's not really their fault, they are probably doing their best, they just don't know it better, and so does everyone, including fans if we are honest. Everyone has their own preferences and goals, and often they are conflicting with each other. Mozilla has to find a common ground to server as much people as possible, and IMHO they are still good at this. Firefox used to be so much worse on some aspects, Chrome and other Browser are still worse on other aspects. Getting the perfect Browser is just not realistic.

Give us more extensibility instead.

True, it's really a joke how many of their promised APIs never were finished after they killed XUL.

Keep supporting v2 manifest and add more.

Didn't they say they will continue with Manifest v2?

There were genuine technical reasons for why XUL and NPAPI had to die, but we need an equally powerful alternative.

Wasn't NPAPI mostly replaced with HTML5? Most stuff done with Flash or Java-Applets is now possible out of the box. Or is something missing?

tliltocatl11• 7 months ago

Didn't they say they will continue with Manifest v2?

Yes and that's a good thing

Wasn't NPAPI mostly replaced with HTML5?

It's true that what NPAPI was used for 99% of the time is better served by HTML5. But it's not like NPAPI was limited to Flash and applets. Afair NPAPI plugins can access all native resources (which is the reason why the security sucked so much), HTML5 obviously can't. E. g. runtime code generation isn't particularly usable in WASM, so no JIT other than browser JIT for you. Then there are stuff like WebUSB/WebNFC/WebSerial that Mozilla killed. Not that they didn't have good reasons to do so, but having a native-exposing plugin system (with some friction, don't just install anything with a click) would have covered most of the use cases without being that much of a privacy problem.

close042• 7 months ago

and not really that harmful in itself

Unless you can't afford the split focus. If Mozilla can do 1 thing right or 2 things half-assed, and it looks like this is the case, they should stop and focus on strengthening the core before hanging more stuff around it.

ethbr12• 7 months ago

[Mozilla always jumped on fads], everyone does.

If you read down in the thread, there's a good discussion about how this simply isn't true about Mozilla.

Of the fads Christophe Henry mentioned top of thread, Mozilla flat out didn't invest any resources in some of them, invested minimal resources in others (accepting donations in crypto), and modest resources in VR (which you'd expect given the browser-VR integration standards forming).

So the feeling about Mozilla being tech-ADHD comes more from folks reading their social media posts than the people who work there or watch the codebase.

godelski16• 7 months ago

  >  The problem is not AI. The problem is that Mozilla keeps jumping on fads instead of focusing on their browser core

Nah, the problem is people just want to hate on Mozilla. I mean even that Mastadon thread they bring up people hating on Mozilla for accepting crypto donations and are equating it to putting a miner in the browser. Like what a fucking joke. It's such a crazy exaggeration of what actually happened. Company just adds new way for people to give them money (which they desperately need) and then everyone gets upset.

How is this not laughable?

Now we're seeing a similar thing. Everyone is talking about fucking LLMs. What, do you think FF is going to start shipping a 100GB browser? Even Llama-8B is >15GB. That would be ridiculous!

No, what FF is doing is implementing features like Translate (an ALREADY opt-in feature[0]) and semantic search. Seriously, go to their Labs tab! They let you opt in to try a feature to semantically search your browser history. That's not an LLM, that's a vector embedding model! What are they going to do next? Semantic search of a webpage? Regex search?! Even in their announcement the other day they mention the iOS "shake to summarize" and that's not even an AI they're shipping it's just a shortcut to Apple Intelligence. The only other thing they've announced is what already exists, a shortcut to use your chatbot of choice. That's not AI in the browser it is literally a split window.

  | Mozilla is not going to train its own giant LLM anytime soon.[1]

  > having a faint through about removing adblock support

Don't be so fucking disingenuous.

They said literally the opposite[1]

  | At some point, though, Enzor-DeMeo will have to tend to Mozilla’s own business. “I do think we need revenue diversification away from Google,” he says, “but I don’t necessarily believe we need revenue diversification away from the browser.” It seems he thinks a combination of subscription revenue, advertising, and maybe a few search and AI placement deals can get that done. He’s also bullish that things like built-in VPN and a privacy service called Monitor can get more people to pay for their browser. He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.

That's not even a quote from him, that's a summarization of their conversation and it literally says that removing ad blockers is against their mission.

Literally the opposite of what you're suggestion.

Sorry, people just want to hate on Firefox.

Look, if anyone wants to be a power user there's nothing Firefox is doing from stopping them from using a fork like Mullvad or Waterfox. Those are going to keep all these AI features out. So what do we privacy maximalists care? The forks give us exactly what we want.

Meanwhile we're just attacking the last line of defense against Google (Chromium) taking over the internet? How fucking stupid are we? We're eating our cake and what, complaining that the baker's hands aren't made of gold? It's just laughable at how much we love shooting ourselves in the foot here. We've been playing this same stupid fucking game for years and watching Chrome take more and more market share. Let FF be the browser for the masses and use a fucking fork if you care about true Scottsmen. It takes literally no technical skill to click download on a different webpage. Seriously, this is so fucking dumb.

I'm just going to link this from further down the main post. The two toots summarize it well[2]

[0] You literally have to download the translation models!

[1] https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enz... (https://archive.is/20251217170357/https://www.theverge.com/t...)

[2] https://mastodon.social/@nical@mastodon.gamedev.place/115741...

tliltocatl11• 7 months ago

money (which they desperately need)

True. But crypto is bad publicity and everyone knows it. At that point it's no better than going out wearing a swastika sign (sorry, Poe's law triggered) and saying it's an ancient Buddhist symbol.

No, what FF is doing is implementing features like Translate (an ALREADY opt-in feature[0]) and semantic search

Did you read my comment? The problem is that this takes focus away from the browser core. Why did they kill Servo? Were are XUL API replacements that were promised? The AI fluff could have been an extension - and that would keep everyone happy.

It feels off-mission.

Than he doesn't need to talk about it at all. Unless that's a vibe check that's it. Somebody already posted an xkcd of it, I'm just doubling: https://xkcd.com/463/

We're eating our cake and what, complaining that the baker's hands aren't made of gold?

Unfortunately it's pretty hard to define where "hand aren't made of gold" stops and "gotta call a HAZMAT decontamination team" starts.

Meanwhile we're just attacking the last line of defense against Google (Chromium) taking over the internet?

The thing is: Google started as "don't be evil" as well. It didn't lasted because of inherit incentives issue. And so if Mozilla is the last line of defense it'd better have some distinguishing features other than "we are not google". Because if they keep focusing on "average user" (btw it's my firm belief that the said user doesn't exist outside management's heads) their incentives wouldn't be any different.

So what do we privacy maximalists care? The forks give us exactly what we want.

That's what I'm doing personally. But the forks barely have resources to remove the crap, yet alone implement new features.

conartist62• 7 months ago

I agree that the forks are the pressure release valves here. Would strongly consider switching to a fork myself.

But still I'm just wrenched by the dissonance in what new-CEO-guy said. 5 years ago or so I reported a serious bug in pointer events. If you move the mouse less than 1px the browser 5-10% of the time Firefox reports to JS that the you moved the cursor ~400pixels up and to the right or left.

Honestly this bug isn't super high impact for the web as a whole, but anyone who uses pointer events needs to work around it by smoothing the input stream. They confirmed the bug in their tracker and there it has sat for five years with no activity while the browser behaves in violation of the contract between the user and the web platform, putting an extra stumbling block in the way of every web application that allows drawing on screen with the mouse cursor.

To me, an issue like that is the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is dead. There's only a few reasons I can think of to leave a perfectly-reproduceable issue like that sitting for five years: 1) you don't have the energy for it, probably because so many other things are on fire 2) you don't see any value in having the trust of your users. or 3) your code is so fucked up inside that there's just no hope of figuring out why a half-pixel movement triggers a mouse would do something insane like trigger a mouse event 400 pixels away.

So now this new CEO guy comes along and says "we've lost people's trust." Wow, I think to myself, he really gets it!" Then he says: "to get trust back, our top priority will be working on AI features." WHAT THE FUCK WHYYYYY!?!?

Did you not literally just say you recognized that you had lost people's trust? Did you think that people didn't trust you because you hadn't tasked every engineer that wants to be able to get a promotion to work on AI!?

mr_machine• 7 months ago

people just want to hate on Firefox

While that may describe a few people, I don't think it fairly characterizes the backlash at all.

I want to love on Firefox. I've been using it since before it was "Firefox." I've championed it among co-workers and friends tirelessly. But over time, Firefox has become more and more unlovable, getting softer on privacy, altering settings in updates, foisting 'experiments' off on us, and now this AI nonsense.

I'm part of a large makerspace and have watched their market share dwindle among the nerds. Virtually no one is left.

someNameIG2• 7 months ago

using a fork like Mullvad or Waterfox. Those are going to keep all these AI features out. So what do we privacy maximalists care? The forks give us exactly what we want.

The thing is most of the forks are still using some/all of the on device ML models, they're just not advertising them as AI. From Waterfoxs announcement of "Not using AI*"

The asterisk acknowledges that “AI” has become a catch-all term. Machine learning tools like local translation engines (Bergamot) are valuable and transparent. Large language models, in their current black-box form, are neither.

https://www.waterfox.com/blog/no-ai-here-response-to-mozilla...

Zen:

Based on Firefox, Zen also inherit its translation features

https://docs.zen-browser.app/user-manual/translate

forephought43• 7 months ago

5 step plan for Mozilla to succeed against the Behemoth Googzilla and the leviathans of MAWS.

1. build a team in Europe to create an email service comparable to gmail/protonmail

- domains: mozmail.com, mmail.com, godmail.com, pmail.com, dogmail.com, meowmail.com

- promoted as a simple everyday email – no overly complicated/advanced federati features in order to increase inter-operability, reduce spam and dealing with federalism

- for more advanced features, integration links with something like signal, or a hosted comms platform

2. invest heavily in Firefox core development and service features

- push for system resource and performance optimizations, even if it requires extensive architectural changes

- focus on perfecting a core browser experience then developing an extension API that allows a level of UI customisations that XUL did, have unsafe/hackers warning for any extension that uses this API, even official ones

- invest in KeePassXC ux and integrate it as a first class and core feature in Firefox that is useable by hackers, consumers and enterprises – offer paid services for simple database sync/backup, as well as a decent managed solution for enterprise.

3. Expand further with a suite of other services that have both self-hosted and paid management extras

- calendar and email client, universally usable between providers, but first class with Firefox and mmail.

- integrate something like libreoffice into a desktop client that can also be embedded into a Firefox tab.

- straight forward self-hostable teams communication platform, managed cloud versions also availabe

- self-hosted / managed file storage platform with web UI with integration links to other services

- all of the above require a unified web, desktop and mobile ux

- offer further software and hardware integrations to completely streamline personal digital management

4. Extensive marketing and brand exposure over TV and social media, while staying charitably non-profit and recognizing the digital roots

- Use the firefox, gecko and other digital animals as icons

- Themes and scapes from origins such as mosaic/netscape

5. In this scene Mozilla continues knocking down the buildings of the titans.

jasonlotito• 7 months ago

It's funny how you post this comment under a comment that says no to all but 2.1 and 2.2.

The problem is that Mozilla keeps jumping on fads instead of focusing on their browser core.

matteocontrini• 7 months ago

Did you miss Thunderbird Pro?

https://www.tb.pro

braiamp2• 7 months ago

The problem is that Mozilla keeps jumping on fads instead of focusing on their browser core

No, the problem is that Mozilla needs money if they want to stop leaning off Google, and people are simply too blind by their hatred of AI that doesn't figure out that Mozilla needs money. What is giving shit loads of money right now? A-fucking-I. If their investors portfolio doesn't include AI on their products, nobody will give them even a second look, much less the funds they need. Mozilla isn't jumping on fads, it's jumping towards were money is.

You want Mozilla to stop doing that? Guarantee their moneis flow. Otherwise, you are a consumer of a free product and you don't get to decide how the free product gets financed. Luckily for you, they haven't decided to make _you_ the product.

zdragnar• 7 months ago

A-fucking-I doesn't make the product better. Mozilla constantly runs in every direction other than what their core users want or need.

You want Mozilla to stop doing that? Guarantee their moneis flow.

Sure, just as soon as they sell something a privacy focused user of a browser wants. Privacy focused password management built into Firefox with paid sync or enterprise integration. Privacy focused paid email hosting, works great with Thunderbird. Had they done any of this back in the day, I'd gladly have paid for it and trusted them over smaller names or Google.

I'm sure they're getting lots of money to throw around playing with the new shiny, but that's not going to keep their users, or keep them happy.

They lost a ton of market share when the browser was slow as an old dog and chrome came on the scene, but they didn't do nearly enough to make up for it.

tliltocatl11• 7 months ago

And how exactly is the AI going to give Mozilla money? I mean not investor money, but actual profit? By alienating their moat userbase (privacy-minded technies)? Because if not for the AI haters, nobody would care about Firefox __at all__.

Funding end-user-facing FOSS is hard. An OS kernel or a DMBS can count on corporations that need new features providing funding. A browser can't. But then if small individual donations aren't enough for them (I think there's still no way to donate to Firefox directly?) they don't have a product.

estimator7292• 7 months ago

Mozilla could instead stop giving all the google money to a CEO who only knows how to say "me too! AI too!"

Maybe hire some engineers instead?

HeckFeck• 7 months ago

Every browser developer should be forced to take an annual pilgrimage to this gravestone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_(web_browser)

baggachipz• 7 months ago

1. Take normal browser

2. Shoehorn flavor-of-the-week web-based over-hyped thing into browser "natively"

3. ???

4. Profit!

giancarlostoro2• 7 months ago

I am waiting for a serious fork of Mozilla to emerge at this point that pays the maintainers better in a bid to overtake Mozilla itself. People would donate to get a better browser, people dont donate because Mozilla wastes all their donor funds on nonsense.

aryonoco2• 7 months ago

There are those. I pay to support Floorp.

But I also donate to Firefox and Thunderbird cause the forks wouldn’t exist without them.

illiac786• 7 months ago

I kind of gave up hope tbh. I still use Firefox but I am waiting for ladybug. It will probably take a couple of years to get there, but it’s what I would have wanted Firefox to be.

tim3333• 7 months ago

I just force quit Firefox because it was slowing the macbook with loads of memory use for nothing much running. On with Chrome... They should that sort of thing?

galleywest200• 7 months ago

I have not really ever had this issue, and I use Firefox Developer Edition on an M2 Macbook Pro every work day.

rPlayer6554• 7 months ago

Ok so walk me through how _only_ focusing on the browser core will make them money other than continuing to be dependent on Google. How can they diversify their revenue streams?

I agree they should make the browser core good, but right now they are entirely dependent on their biggest competitor.

tliltocatl11• 7 months ago

- Start accepting small individual donations solely for the Firefox team (rather than generalized Mozilla stuff that goes on anything but Firefox).

- Start crowdfunding for features.

- Go RedHat route, offer an enterprise version with centrally managed profiles and DLP feature. Not exactly free-as-in-freedom stuff but still better than adtech.

- Get some EU bureaucrats thru a FUD session against Chrome (does it counts as FUD if it's true?), then apply for some EU funding program. Dirty and messy, still better than adtech.

None of this is particularly lucrative or clean, but I don't see how AI would bring them any __revenue__ (do not confuse with investment) at all. There are too many players there already and many of them are more established - and what Mozilla have?

- Their engineering team? Maybe.

- The browser engine? Completely irrelevant (and that's exactly the problem).

- Their userbase? The userbase they have left seems extremely averse to value-added features in general, and the AI kind in particular.

Then assume they focus on integrating AI into the browser, how do they monetize it next? Sell data? Then there is no reason to choose them over Google. Charge for interference? No chance to compete against established hyperscalers there and would go against their local-first selling point.

The sad truth about platform-crucial software like a web browser is that monetizing it in any way inherently reduces it's value for users. And in case of Firefox it's a pretty small margin that keeps it competitive.

drysart• 7 months ago

Falling behind on the browser core makes users leave Firefox because the one non-negotiable requirement users have is that the browser works on the websites they need it to work on. Literally nothing else Mozilla tries to do to diversify their revenue streams will matter if the browser they're trying to build it on top of is not sound and functional.

If they weren't slipping on the core browser as much as they have been, there wouldn't be nearly as many shouts as there are today when they instead spend resources on chasing the latest fad.

parl_match• 7 months ago

There are a tons of "we bundled all the latest crap" Chrome forks out there. Nobody needs more those.

And it's fine if they want to compete in that space, but they don't even seem to have the drive or desire to excel there.

To this day, I'm surprised that chromium powers electron and firefox hasn't released a compelling alternative.

bannana2033• 7 months ago

Average Joe or Joan will install some crap AI assisted browser if some idiot in Tiktok or FB says follow me and I will DM you a special link to get baby-clothes for -10% discount. Hope your family is not that. My spouse despite reading HN etc thinks that anyway privacy is lost - so why notget at least that 10% discount.

Another problem for Mozilla:

- If they don't pivot to AI people will leave it. Yes, some hardcore RMS fans will use some clone of Firefox - all others will not

- If they adopt modern AI people scream

- Same happened when Mozilla accepted DRM (for Netflix etc). Many tech writers, commentators were against that. But if Firefox did not adopt it then all those tech writers would have used Chrome to see Netflix. No one of these commentators say they will boycott Netflix.

emsign• 7 months ago

Firefox has AI features?? wth