With this, people will come here and the go. I mean consider the example of many GNU/Linux users I know who use GNU/Linux (or for them Linux means Ubuntu) system and can ask them to try out Waterfox. But, about installation - can't we have .deb? I know we can easily install from tarball and then setup the .desktop file and then adjust the icon to properly display, and what not...But, Can we make a bit simpler to try?
No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
111–120 of 344 posts
Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
All your complaints can be resolved in a few seconds by using the settings to customize the browser to your liking and not downloading extensions you dont like. And tons of people asked for that sidebar by the way. We have to put this all in the context. Firefox is trying to diversify their revenue away from google search. They are trying to provide users with a Modern browser. This means adding the features that peo…
Pay for what? It says it's a local AI model so how will AI companies be giving Firefox revenue from this?
What says that?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot This page not only prominently features cloud based AI solutions, I can't actually even see local AI as an option.
Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
#113This feature can be easily disabled with policies: https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/#generativeai https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/#preferences https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/browser/app/profil... https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/modules/libpref/in...
Even if we ignore things like "they're chasing AI fads instead of better things" and "they're adding attack surface" and so forth, and just focus on the disabling feature toggles thing...
... Mozilla has re-enabled AI-related toggles that people have disabled. (I've heard this from others and observed it myself.) They also keep adding new ones that aren't controlled by a master switch. They're getting pretty user-hostile.
Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
#114...and keep your hand up if you've ever donated to Firefox
I gave them over $500 and I sure as hell will never do that again.
Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
#115> Large language models are something else entirely*. They are black boxes. You cannot audit them. You cannot truly understand what they do with your data. You cannot verify their behaviour. And Mozilla wants to put them at the heart of the browser and that doesn't sit well. Am I being overly critical here or is this kind of a silly position to have right after talking about how neural machine translation is okay? Ma…
Aside: Does anyone actually use summarization features? I've never once been tempted to "summarize" because when I read something I either want to read the entire thing, or look for something specific. Things I want summarized, like academic papers, already have an abstract or a synopsis.
Haven’t tried them but I can see these features being really useful for screen reader users.
Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
All your complaints can be resolved in a few seconds by using the settings to customize the browser to your liking and not downloading extensions you dont like. And tons of people asked for that sidebar by the way. We have to put this all in the context. Firefox is trying to diversify their revenue away from google search. They are trying to provide users with a Modern browser. This means adding the features that peo…
For me, the complaint isn’t the AI itself, but the updated privacy policy that was rolled out prior to the AI features. Regardless of me using the AI features or not, I must agree to their updated privacy policy. According to the privacy policy changes, they are selling data (per the legal definition of selling data) to data partners. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-...
This is an absurd take. The meaning of "selling" is extremely broad, courts have found such language to apply to transactions as simple as providing an http request in exchange for an http response. Their lawyers must have been begging them to remove that language for the liability it represents.
For all purposes actually relevant to privacy, the updated language is more specific and just as strong.
Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
#117> Large language models are something else entirely*. They are black boxes. You cannot audit them. You cannot truly understand what they do with your data. You cannot verify their behaviour. And Mozilla wants to put them at the heart of the browser and that doesn't sit well. Am I being overly critical here or is this kind of a silly position to have right after talking about how neural machine translation is okay? Ma…
Aside: Does anyone actually use summarization features? I've never once been tempted to "summarize" because when I read something I either want to read the entire thing, or look for something specific. Things I want summarized, like academic papers, already have an abstract or a synopsis.
Yes. I use it sometimes in Firefox with my local LLM server. Sometimes i come across an article I'm curious about but don't have the time or energy to read. Then I get a TL;DR from it. I know it's not perfect but the alternative is not reading it at all.
If it does interest me then I can explore it. I guess I do this once a week or so, not a lot.
Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [Update]: as I posted below, sample use cases would include translation, article summarization, asking questions from a long wiki page... and maybe with some agents built-in as well: parallelizing a form filling/ecom task, having the agent transcribe/translate an audio/video in real time, etc I don't want any of this built into my web browser. Period. This is coming from someone who pays for a Claude Max subscripti…
Reread your post with your evil PM hat on. You just said "I'm willing to pay for AI". That's all they hear.
Somehow they also think we'll pay for Gemini, GPT, Claude, perplexity and their browser thingy, co-pilot and whatever else they have going on. Not to mention, all these things do 95% the same and don't really have any moat.
I don't understand why these CEOs are so confident they're standing out from the rest. Because really, they don't.
Right now firefox is a browser as good as Chrome and in a few niche things better, but its having a deeply difficult time getting/keeping marketshare.
I don't see their big masterplan for when Firefox is just as good as the other AI powered browsers. What will make people choose Mozilla? It's not like they're the first to come up with this idea and they don't even have their own models so one way or another they're going to play second fiddle to a competitor.
I think there's a really really strong part of 2. ??? / 3. profit!!! In all this. And not just in Mozilla. But more so.
I mean OpenAI, they have first-mover. Their moat is piling up legislation to slow down the others. Microsoft, they have all their office users, they will cram their AI down their throats whether they want it or not. They're way behind on model development due to strategic miscalculations but they traded their place as a hyperscaler for a ticket into the big game with OpenAI. Google, they have fuck you money and will do the same as Microsoft with their search and mail users.
But Mozilla? "Oh we want to get more into advertising". Ehm yeah basically what will alienate your last few supporters, and getting onto a market where people with 1000x more money than you have the entire market divided between them. Being slightly more "ethical" will be laughed away by their market forces.
Mozilla has the luck that it doesn't have too many independent investors. Not many people screaming "what are we doing about AI because everyone else doing it". They should have a little more insight and less pressure but instead they jump into the same pool with much bigger sharks.
In some ways I think it's that Mozilla leadership still seems themselves as a big tech player that is temporarily a little embarrassed on the field. Not like the second-rank one it is that has already thoroughly deeply lost and must really find something unique to have a reason to exist. Because being a small player is not super bad, many small outfits do great. But it requires a strong niche you're really really good at, better than all the rest. That kinda vision I just don't see from Mozilla.
Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
#119> Large language models are something else entirely*. They are black boxes. You cannot audit them. You cannot truly understand what they do with your data. You cannot verify their behaviour. And Mozilla wants to put them at the heart of the browser and that doesn't sit well. Am I being overly critical here or is this kind of a silly position to have right after talking about how neural machine translation is okay? Ma…
Aside: Does anyone actually use summarization features? I've never once been tempted to "summarize" because when I read something I either want to read the entire thing, or look for something specific. Things I want summarized, like academic papers, already have an abstract or a synopsis.
I occasionally use the "summarize" button on the iPhone Mobile Safari reader view if I land on a blog entry and it's quite long and I want to get a quick idea of if it's worth reading the whole thing or not.
Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pay for what? It says it's a local AI model so how will AI companies be giving Firefox revenue from this?
What says that? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot This page not only prominently features cloud based AI solutions, I can't actually even see local AI as an option.
The new AI Tab Grouping feature says it. I've never tried the AI chatbot feature but that makes sense. Would be fun to somehow talk to the local AI translation feature.