Respect. This is what Firefox could have been.
In the real world, in the same line as the article suggests, there was a brief time when the "puts you back in control" browser needed you to change the following about:config settings to disable the force-pushed ai:
browser.ml.enable, browser.ml.chat.enabled, browser.ml.chat.sidebar, browser.ml.chat.menu, browser.ml.chat.page, extensions.ml.enabled, browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled, browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled, browser.ml.smartAssist.enabled, browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled, browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled, pdfjs.enableAltTextModelDownload, pdfjs.enableGuessAltText
A bit of community feedback later, and we've got one big "off" button, and me wondering which footgun the executives will shoot themselves with next.
Look, I absolutely agree it sucks they didn't deliver the opt-out/in interface day one, it was obvious people would want it, and yes, it's not the first time they've blundered.
At the same time, they did listen to the feedback and deliver. It now has a genuinely good interface for it where you don't have to opt out of everything, but can opt-in where you want it. It's not just a big off button, it's a general out-out including new features, but that then exposes individual opt-ins if you want for each feature. Most other browsers won't respond at all. Firefox is still by far the best browser out there for people who care about their privacy.
Especially on HN, Firefox just gets so much more hate than software that is way more user hostile for much less bad behaviour. I'm not saying we shouldn't hold it to a higher standard when that is what it's selling itself on: clearly we can't allow "not as bad" to let it slip into worse and worse, but at the same time, I don't understand how the narrative seems to trend towards "they are essentially the same as google" when that is so clearly not true (to be clear, not saying you are saying that in this post, just that's the vibe of HN's commentary as a whole).
People are mad because Mozilla refuses to listen to users until backlash becomes a threat to the company. They keep pushing users to the limit and only pull back slightly when the screaming gets too loud.
People are mad because Mozilla is clearly and unashamedly trying to boil the frog and doesn't seem to even be interested in hiding that fact.
People are mad because Mozilla is speed-running SV software-shittifying strategies without even doing us the dignity of pretending they aren't.
That is true - Firefox is definitely held to a higher standard here and elsewhere. They marketed those values to us. So the criticisms, in my opinion, are definitely justified. And no, they aren't listening to their users.
If they had listened to their users they would have delivered what every users wants - just a browser. Not some kind of "platform" stuffed with lot of unwanted crap that makes it bloated and introduces possibly new unnecessary attack vectors in it (both malicious and / or privacy exploits). All those additional crap that every new management wants in Firefox should have been a browser extension or a plugin, instead of being bundled into the core browser. When a user installs / updates Firefox, they could be asked if they want to install any of these new feature available as an extension / plugin. That keeps the browser lean, transfers the choice completely to the user and is genuinely respectful of the user. The current way of force bundling everything into the browser, making it bloated, and then pretending that "users can opt-out" is not just arrogance but also misleading (to be polite) as it is common knowledge among software firms that most people often never change the default settings.
Think about it ... if every of these controversial features - Pocket, ads in address bar or home page, AI etc. etc. - had been made available as user opted extension or plugin, would there ever have been any controversies? The installation data itself would provide a feedback of how much the users actually care about these features, and provide unique insights to the management into the kind of user base that it has (which the article is spot-on about).
(Note that I know that some of these features are indeed implemented as an extension. But not as user controlled ones as they cannot be completely uninstalled. All the user can do is disable it (turn "off or on"). Why? It is stuff like this that makes it harder to trust claims of caring about user Privacy.)
No one marketed luddite anti-values to you. And it's a step too far to act like anything that contradicts those wants are actually immoral
> it's not the first time they've blundered
It's a recurring pattern of not reading the room
Indeed, and it's on purpose.
Everyone was forced to be exposed to it. To see it. Only after that happened, did they let users disable it.
It's effectively the equivalent of a spam campaign.
People had to raise hell to get that, while being made fun of by their CMs on social media. Even the opt-out is full of silicon valley dark patterns. Whoever is calling shots about the product at Mozilla doesn't have your best interests at heart.
What are those dark patterns? It's an off button, it works, and it does not get back on. It's the polar opposite of the "maybe later, I'll ask again every week and reset the setting in your back" unfortunate norm that plagues a lot of major proprietary software/service.
"You can turn it off" is not in the same category of "would you like to turn this on?" or even "do you want this in the first place?"
Opt-out is not consent, nor is it respect.
Opt-out is a dark pattern, period. Opt-out is forcing something onto users and hoping they don't go out of their way to disable it. It is the same as "maybe later".
The only correct move would be remove the option, remove all AI code, and move it into extensions. If the extension security policies, and other restrictions, don't allow all the things they want to put in, then GOOD, they don't go in.
I think Mozilla is still mostly made up of tech-optimist people, so they were open and interested in ai from day one. I highly doubt there was any malicious intent.
And those are some of the better named config options. Some are pretty opaque, as are their values (and often poorly documented). You can tell there isn't an edict to make config options highly accessible
They KEEP adding utter cancerous garbage to the homepage/new tab page. I recently installed Firefox from scratch for a coworker who was having chrome-only issues(yes, they do exist!) and was blown away by how insanely gross the default settings are now. It’s straight up adware junk bullshit
Maybe I just love downvotes, but the Firefox AI sidebar is incredibly useful and I make use of it nearly every day.
Good for you. The point is that a lot of Firefox users actively didn't want these sorts of features enabled and pushed on them. That was clear and obvious to anyone paying attention to general reactions to unsolicited AI helper tools, going back decades. For Mozilla to turn this on without any respect for those users’ preferences was a huge mistake that they keep making over and over again.
More specifically: they chose Firebox because it doesn't have those kind of features. If the just wanted a (sorta-kinda) open-source browser filled with all the latest hype features they would've simply used Chromium.
Using Firefox is a political choice. People use it because it's one of the few remaining traditional browsers which isn't a tentacle of Big Tech. Chasing the competition and adding the stuff your users are actively trying to avoid isn't going to work.
> If the just wanted a (sorta-kinda) open-source browser filled with all the latest hype features they would've simply used Chromium.
I don't mind features existing, especially if I can switch them off if I don't want them. I definitely mind Chrom(ium|e).
I don't see how the existence of the Firefox AI sidebar gives Google effective control over web specs.
The main reason for using Firefox is because they support Manifest v2 / Ad-Blockers.
This increases security while also harming Google's business model. Win-Win.
You're complaning that the browser that "puts you back in control" ... put you back in control of which AI features you want to enable/disable? How horrible!
What? They didn't make these 10 distinct features one single all-or-nothing button? They let you switch them on or off individually?? How dare they?!?
What? They shipped new features to the browser...turned on?!? Instead of spending all those development hours and then...hiding them behind a setting by default?
I need "AI" in my browser, so I don't use the AI features. No data was sent anywhere. No 4 GB model was downloaded. Nothing happened, except for a popup saying "hey, by the way, if you want to do X, just press this button here". It's just UI elements. No AI-related code runs, no data is sent to AI companies unless you directly tell the browser to do that.
Imagine if Firefox shipped a brand new GPU-accelerated compositor, improved hardware video decoding and WebGL/WebGPU. You people cry about why they didn't add a big "disable GPU features" button? And that they dared to enable this by default?
You either missed the point or deliberately missed the point.
The issue was they shipped AI features built into everything and the only way to switch them off was to "about:config" a bunch of settings, they shouldn't have shipped it without the off switch and "Open about:settings and then disable things manually" isn't control for the average user.
I know what the point is. But what I don't get is why people are expecting hiding certain features and buttons should be a first-class setting. Again, they're just UI elements, they don't do anything until you tell them to.
The user has the choice to not use these features. It's not like Firefox was sending data to AI companies by default. But if you want to completely make them disappear, so you can live in your fantasy world where LLMs were never invented, then yes, that's a niche personal preference and an advanced customization. That's why it goes under about:config.
Well, from version 151 there is now a setting to turn all the built-in AI off. So people in some part of Mozilla disagreed with your position sufficiently to provide a setting.
PS: I do actually find Google's ai thing in the search useful now and again, so no fantasy world.
This attitude is exactly why Mozilla is failing. Total contempt and ignorance of the users that are the core of Firefox’s user base. If someone doesn’t want to use AI features, that’s not “living in a fantasy world”. And if Mozilla had any respect for its users, they would have realized the need to make this sort of thing a first class setting. Pretending that their core users are delusional freaks who only deserve “niche” settings is exactly why they are rapidly losing that audience.
You're missing the point. If someone doesn't want to use AI features, they can just NOT. USE. THEM. That's it. Just don't press the AI button. Is it that hard? Would you say Mozilla is deleting all your data because there's a "Delete cookies and history" button in the menu? You can just NOT. PRESS. THE. BUTTON.
The master AI switch doesn't actually change whether the browser uses AI features - it never does unless you specifically run them. What it does is hides them from the user, pretending they don't exist.
Browsers that don't respect their users' choices about using AI do things like automatically download large models in the background, integrate cloud-based speech recognition and synthesis as an API available to any website and make the default search engine which they also own show LLM slop above actual results.
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And you missed the question about a GPU composition toggle.