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Firefox Getting New Controls to Turn Off AI Features

macrumors.com

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Re: Firefox Getting New Controls to Turn Off AI Features

#41

Post by esperent »

drnick1 wrote: post #39
rc_kas wrote: post #37

I keep meaning to make a guide "how to make firefox not suck" but I never get around to it. It's a great browser, but I always forget the default settings are super stupid. Myself and power users all have it customized to the hilt. It takes some serious work to get a new new FireFox install working nicely.

This. Since Firefox claims to be a privacy-first browser, it should, by default, use the Arkenfox settings (report spoofed values for language, screen size, fonts, and many other attributes that aid fingerprinting), and include uBlock Origin out of the box. But it should go even further; the ultimate goal should be for all Firefox users to basically look the same from the point of view of third parties and put an end…

> report spoofed values for language, screen size, fonts, and many other attributes that aid fingerprinting

How much do these break functionality? If I spoof language, am I going to start seeing websites in German? If I spoof screen size, am I going to get weirdly zoomed websites?

Re: Firefox Getting New Controls to Turn Off AI Features

#43

Post by Retr0id »

rc_kas wrote: post #37

I keep meaning to make a guide "how to make firefox not suck" but I never get around to it. It's a great browser, but I always forget the default settings are super stupid. Myself and power users all have it customized to the hilt. It takes some serious work to get a new new FireFox install working nicely.

Likewise. The main thing I change is enforcing separate address bar and search box. It takes a lot of configuring to make the address bar stop being "smart" (i.e. never send things I type there to a search engine even if they're not valid URLs), and I can't even remember what options I used to fix it.

Re: Firefox Getting New Controls to Turn Off AI Features

#44

Post by wiredpancake »

drnick1 wrote: post #39
rc_kas wrote: post #37

I keep meaning to make a guide "how to make firefox not suck" but I never get around to it. It's a great browser, but I always forget the default settings are super stupid. Myself and power users all have it customized to the hilt. It takes some serious work to get a new new FireFox install working nicely.

This. Since Firefox claims to be a privacy-first browser, it should, by default, use the Arkenfox settings (report spoofed values for language, screen size, fonts, and many other attributes that aid fingerprinting), and include uBlock Origin out of the box. But it should go even further; the ultimate goal should be for all Firefox users to basically look the same from the point of view of third parties and put an end…

[dead]

Re: Firefox Getting New Controls to Turn Off AI Features

#45

Post by hn92726819 »

crabmusket wrote: post #10

Why are there controls to turn off AI features, but no controls to turn on AI features?

In the parallel universe where Firefox defaults to ai features being off, there's a snarky comment like yours about why it isn't on by default.

It is really tiring to hear this stuff. People (rightfully) complained there was no switch. One was added. In Chrome, you can't turn off Google's ai unless you install a third party extension that hasn't yet been blocked by Google. Not a lot of companies allow disabling their garbage, but FF does.

Can't we be happy with this nice switch?

Re: Firefox Getting New Controls to Turn Off AI Features

#47

Post by hn92726819 »

username223 wrote: post #40

If accurate, this strikes me as something like malicious compliance. > Translations, which help you browse the web in your preferred language. Machine translation can be useful when you want to get the gist of something in a language you don't know. > Alt text in PDFs, which add accessibility descriptions to images in PDF pages. OCR? Okay... > AI-enhanced tab grouping, which suggests related tabs and group names. Wha…

> The AI features can be disabled entirely or individually, so users can pick and choose what they want to use

It sounds like you would want to switch off two of them and leave two of them on, no? How is that malicious compliance?

The master AI switch is for people that have moral issues with all AI, so they want all future features turned off.

Re: Firefox Getting New Controls to Turn Off AI Features

#49

Post by shawn_w »

rc_kas wrote: post #37

I keep meaning to make a guide "how to make firefox not suck" but I never get around to it. It's a great browser, but I always forget the default settings are super stupid. Myself and power users all have it customized to the hilt. It takes some serious work to get a new new FireFox install working nicely.

The only things I do with a new copy of Firefox is install uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger and it works quite nicely.

(Oh, and an extension that redirects reddit links to old reddit, and RES)

Re: Firefox Getting New Controls to Turn Off AI Features

#50

Post by protocolture »

chillfox wrote: post #25

I am tired of turning features off. At this point I just want a boring browser that handles html/css/js, bookmarks, tabs (should sleep inactive tabs), plugins (for my chosen password manager and ad blocker), and page zoom. Those are the only features I actually use regularly. That's it, I would be willing to make a one time purchase for that, no subscriptions... Ok, I could maybe be convinced for a subscription if it…

Its not good enough for a fork. It needs to be a major, well maintained product, like firefox.
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