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Tell HN: It's now impossible to disable all AI features in Firefox 145 (latest)

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Re: Tell HN: It's now impossible to disable all AI features in Firefox 145 (latest)

#21

Post by n2d4 »

LauraMedia wrote: post #14

Isn't it odd? All those tech CEOs tell us that we won't be able to live in a world without AI, how AI will be within every single app, service or codebase eventually... And then they constantly try to shove it into their products, with no way to disable it. I'm assuming the user data would show that quite a lot of people would turn it off, so to not ruin your own statistics for the next shareholder/investor meeting,…

> I'm assuming the user data would show that quite a lot of people would turn it off

You would be wrong — outside of the Hacker News bubble very few people mess with their default settings, in any app.

Re: Tell HN: It's now impossible to disable all AI features in Firefox 145 (latest)

#24

Post by Akhil34 »

Has anyone verified if this is just a UI leftover, or if the underlying services are actually still active in the background even when disabled? I've been considering switching to a fork like LibreWolf if Mozilla keeps hard-baking these features into the core.

Re: Tell HN: It's now impossible to disable all AI features in Firefox 145 (latest)

#25

Post by lxgr »

blibble wrote: post #11
RandomBacon wrote: post #7

Does any software have a survey for what users want? Instead of immediately pushing AI, they should have pushed a survey where AI was one of the choices/questions.

if they do that there's a risk of getting an answer they don't want

Showing a pop-up to a survey honestly seems more annoying than an unobtrusive “open LLM sidebar” context menu switch.

Firefox also collects usage data if individual features (which can also be disabled), so they’ll learn about the adoption soon enough.

Re: Tell HN: It's now impossible to disable all AI features in Firefox 145 (latest)

#26

Post by lxgr »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #18
devwastaken wrote: post #17

they also removed the user facing setting to disable ocsp stapling - ocsp stapling leaks domain info. it can only be found in about:config now.

I’m confused about for this assertion, for two reasons: - My understanding is that OCSP stapling stops leaks, because the browser can get OCSP data from the server instead of needing to fetch it separately. - Last I heard, Firefox was in the process of removing OCSP responder checks (precisely for privacy reasons) in favor of CRLite-based revocation checks—are you sure they didn’t remove whatever setting you’re refer…

[flagged]

Re: Tell HN: It's now impossible to disable all AI features in Firefox 145 (latest)

#27

Post by lxgr »

Akhil34 wrote: post #24

Has anyone verified if this is just a UI leftover, or if the underlying services are actually still active in the background even when disabled? I've been considering switching to a fork like LibreWolf if Mozilla keeps hard-baking these features into the core.

The “underlying services” are a web view in a sidebar that defaults to chatgpt.com or claude.ai.

If you don’t open that, I’d be surprised if anything was instantiated or sent at all.

Re: Tell HN: It's now impossible to disable all AI features in Firefox 145 (latest)

#29

Post by malfist »

n2d4 wrote: post #21
LauraMedia wrote: post #14

Isn't it odd? All those tech CEOs tell us that we won't be able to live in a world without AI, how AI will be within every single app, service or codebase eventually... And then they constantly try to shove it into their products, with no way to disable it. I'm assuming the user data would show that quite a lot of people would turn it off, so to not ruin your own statistics for the next shareholder/investor meeting,…

> I'm assuming the user data would show that quite a lot of people would turn it off You would be wrong — outside of the Hacker News bubble very few people mess with their default settings, in any app.

Even if that's the case, I doubt usage rates are very high.
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