> We see a lot of promise in AI browser features making your online experience smoother, more helpful, and more profitable for us because we can sell your data!
Fixed that for you greed dbags.
I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
161–170 of 782 posts
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#162I connected Claude to Firefox's ai pane and honestly I feel that this a good middle ground. I don't want an AI browser but I appreciate being able to have ai access specific pages when I have questions. My only beef is they've basically put Claude's webpage on a side pane, with all the issues of a squished webpage. I also think having a separate mode is really the best middle ground between an all spying ai-browser a…
> Claude's webpage on a side pane, with all the issues of a squished webpage. I have used that feature for a few weeks now and find it utterly useless. Partly because it is squished. But mostly because it offers no value over just having a tab open with Claude (or in my case Mistral). The extra buttons (summarize) and integration (context menu) hardly ever work (pages and selections are often too large for gpt, copil…
Being able to e.g. hook up Claude Code to any webpage would be killer for both web development and task automation.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you know they want a correct summary? AI slop is good enough, acceptable for many people.
What is the use of such a summary?
Determining whether something is worth reading doesn't require a good summary, just one that contains enough relevant snippets to give a decent indication.
The opportunity cost of "missing out" on reading a page you're unsure enough about to want a summary of is not likely to be high, and similarly it doesn't matter much if you end up reading a few paragraphs before you realise you were misled.
There are very few tasks where we absolutely must have accurate information all the time.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#164Nobody wants anything from Mozilla except Firefox/Thunderbird to be high-performance alternatives to Chrome/Outlook with fewer restrictions on extensions. That’s it. The rest is just activism and kids playing in a sandbox with non-profit money to pad out their resume with whatever topical keywords might land them their next gig.
I am a regular Firefox user; it is literally the tool I use most often during my working hours. I like it more than Chrome. Firefox is steadily losing market share, and any attempts to do something about it are met with negativity. The 2-4% of users who use it care about their privacy. But they are not being deprived of it; the AI tab is optional, and no one is removing the regular tab. (Of course, it would be better…
It’s losing market share because it doesn’t keep up with supporting the latest web standards.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#165Go to about:config and set browser.ml.enabled to false and throw in browser.ml.chat.enabled (false) for good measure. Done.
You'd think so, but you also need to set browser.ml.chat.menu to false to remove a context menu item.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#166Only reason Firefox has 2% market share is that Mozilla's leaders keep listening to a tiny, loud minority of extremely online luddites instead of delivering actual users what they want. The anti-AI set on HN is the same set that claims users want feature phones, not smartphones. They'd probably also be against long-distance telephone lines and the wheel.
I mean, who were they listening to when they acquired Pocket and integrated it into Firefox? Or decided to build their own video chat service? Or an encrypted file sharing service? Or Persona, Firefox OS, Firefox Hello, etc etc. These weren't just bad decisions in retrospect, these were clearly bad decisions at the time.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can’t use a google product without being harassed (...) You can disable AI in Google products. E.g. in Gmail: go to Settings (the gear icon), click See all settings, navigate to the General tab, scroll down to find Smart features and personalization and uncheck the checkbox. Source: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/15604322
And will that work permanently, or will I have to hunt down another setting in another month when they stuff it into another workflow I don't want it in?
Yeah, if YouTube Shorts or Games are any indication, it'll be back soon! The AI Mode in Google Search comes up nearly every time I use it no matter how many times I hit "No"
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#168I don't want AI in Firefox. For one, because it breaks the Unix philosophy of "doing one thing and doing that well". In that vein, I do want Firefox to develop/allow/improve an interface so that machines, amongst which AI-MCPs, can drive my firefox. And do so safely, secure, contained, etc. So that my AI agent can e.g. open a Firefox tab and do things there on my behalf. Without me being afraid it nukes all my bookma…
I don't think you can apply Unix philosophy to a (GUI) web browser, you don't use it compositionally.
In fact, the web browser may be the best example of a program antithetical to the unix philosophy. It is a single program that does rendering, password management, video decoding, dev tools, notifications, extension systems, etc. Adding some new AI component is rather on-brand for browsers (whether a good decision or not).
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you give an example? And how would I know the LLM has error bounds appropriate for my situation?
> Can you give an example? Recipe pages full of fluff. Review pages full of fluff. Almost any web page full of fluff, which is a rapidly rising proportion. > And how would I know the LLM has error bounds appropriate for my situation? You consider whether you care if it is wrong, and then you try it a couple of times, and apply some common sense when reading the summaries, just the same as when considering if you trus…
Most recipe blogs have a "skip to recipe" button because they know you don't care.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#170Mozilla's gonna Mozilla. I don't want this, but at the same time I think people are overreacting. If Mozilla remains true to their word and this is an opt-in sort of thing, it's hard for me to get too worked up about it. I can just ignore it.
It's specifically been opt-out: `browser.ml.enable` is set to `true` in `about:config` in recent versions, and even disabling that doesn't get rid of the "AI assistant" option in the right-click dropdown menu.
browser.ml.chat.enabled set to false
browser.ml.chat.menu set to false
browser.ml.chat.page set to false
browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge set to false
browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge set to false
browser.ml.chat.shortcuts set to false
browser.ml.chat.sidebar set to false
browser.ml.enable set to false
browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled set to false
browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled set to false
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled set to false
browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnable set to false
extensions.ml.enabled set to false
Can also use the user config override if you want to do it without having to do that every time you install FF somewhere new (put user.js in the root folder of your firefox profile).
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.menu", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.page", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.shortcuts", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.sidebar", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.enable", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnable", false);
user_pref("extensions.ml.enabled", false);