“It’s safe to say that the people who volunteered to “shape” the initiative want it dead and buried. Of the 52 responses at the time of writing, all rejected the idea and asked Mozilla to stop shoving AI features into Firefox.”
“It’s safe to say that the people who volunteered to “shape” the initiative want it dead and buried. Of the 52 responses at the time of writing, all rejected the idea and asked Mozilla to stop shoving AI features into Firefox.”
A fork is great, but the more a fork deviates, the more issues there are likely to be. Firefox is already at low enough numbers that it’s not really sustainable.
Then Mozilla should start listening to their users instead of driving them away. I know I stopped using Firefox after being a regular user since launch because the AI nonsense became the last sta straw.
I think the hope is to get more people in than losing them. But with Ai nobody will stay forever, because the time someone else makes a better Ai tool, they switch. Because Mozilla loses personality and uniqueness and start getting replaceable. … just like employees who are forced to use Ai instead their own work and knowledge.
Yes but we shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
The good is other rendering engines currently in the works.
What do you mean by “we shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good”? Why should I use a browser which is actively anti-user when there are better alternatives out there?
There aren’t better alternatives, and the ai shit is all easy to disable.
Disabling it is one more thing to fingerprint me on.
It serves literally no purpose for any intelligent person.
Users don’t have to disable it. Just give them a browser where they’re not enabled by default!
To my knowledge that literally only exists in the form of a Firefox fork like Librewolf. Which takes more effort to switch to than simply disabling a couple values in config.
LibreWolf is very privacy focused and hardened by default in ways that impact convenience. Waterfox on the other hand? I’d say switching to that is easier than turning off all the shit you’d have to turn off in a fresh FF install. You copy the profile folder into the spot where WF stores its profiles, and you’re done. All your everything is intact. History, cache, bookmarks, cookies, extensions, login sessions, settings (though your opt-out settings for garbage like homepage sponsored links or AI don’t do anything anymore because there’s nothing to opt out of).
I’d been using Firefox since it was Netscape Navigator. One toggle too many got me on Waterfox a few months ago. I have noticed absolutely no difference in my heavily customized browsing experience from the change, other than not having to go menu diving to turn off the new data harvesting anti-feature of the month.
They are literally mentioned in the article:
- https://manualdousuario.net/en/mozilla-firefox-window-ai/.
Well, the first two essentially are Firefox and the latter is very immature to the point that I doubt you could reliably use it. It’s in beta.
Yes, “essentially firefox but without mozilla corporation or data harvesting / ad partners” is exactly what you’d want to use instead of firefox. Waterfox in particular is so “essentially” firefox that it is firefox. Copy over your profile folder. Click the blue icon instead of the orange one. Congratulations, you are migrated and never have to worry about sponsors or ai in your browser again. Waterfox doesn’t even have telemetry to opt out of.
My two biggest issues with a fork are: a) timely updates, they take a bit longer than the main version, and b) trust issues, I don’t trust most forks.
Try Phoenix for Firefox https://github.com/celenityy/Phoenix