Yeah I’m switch off Firefox finally. I tried Floorp it does have some the same AI stuff you have to turn off. Waterfox doesn’t have it in at all. So Waterfox it is.
I could never not use zen or the similar browsers
Looks nice but how’s the ad blocking performance? I’m currently using Librewolf with ublock origin and a pi-hole and I basically never see ads anymore
I just use uBlock Origin with Zen and I never see ads. Not sure if it works on Youtube or any other streaming sites as I do not use any of them.
ublock does work nicely in YouTube, never had any problems BTW I use Orion
Well, I still haven’t seen any AI in my Firefox and I’m planing on using it until I will.
There are a bunch of flags in
about:configyou can check as well, if you wanna be extra sure they’re turned off. Just search forbrowser.ml. There are more but this was all I could capture in one screenshot. Bold means I had to change it, which means it was on by default. That said I’m using CachyOS repos, not the direct Arch ones.
Hold your click for at least one second on any link and it will show a preview of the link and suggest you to use AI to describe it
So it’s entirely optional, you only encounter it by interacting with the browser in an atypical way, and the thing it does is a thing that AI is actually pretty decent at (summarizing text)? Sounds like they couldn’t stop themselves from joining the dick hammering bandwagon, but decided not to hit it too hard.
Holding my click on a volume slider triggered the feature so it quickly became really annoying
This isn’t my wheelhouse so take it with a grain of salt, but an argument against link summarizers that I’ve heard is that it takes views away from websites that could be generating revenue for themselves. Instead an LLM scraped their content and fed a summary directly to the user.
Do people making that argument also find ad blockers even ten percent as horrible as this? They both ultimately have the same effect, which is your web browser not maximizing someone else’s profits by denying them a revenue opportunity.
I’d be curious if the link summarizer in Firefox runs a model locally or calls some remote API. Most current machines ought to be able to run an appropriate LLM model for that task.
I genuinely thought you said “hold your dick for at least one second”
Time to pull out a hammer
STOP! HAMMER TIME!
Settings > scroll down to “General” > look at the options under “Enable link previews”. You can turn the previews off altogether or just turn off the AI part
In my opinion this is one of the main issues. All those features should be disabled by default, and only the user decide if they want to enable them!
But they are doing the opposite.
This is a defence only until it isn’t - although thank you for the tip.
That’s how Windows has been going for years - adding more and more crap and make it all default enabled, and people are like “Oh just turn it off bro.”
Then every update adds more unwanted options that get increasingly difficult to turn off, or randomly turn themselves back on, and before you know it we’ve reached a point where every new install soon needs an entire checklist to go through to make things actually usable again.
That is not how life should be. I want something that respects me by default, and if it wants me to try a feature I might find even slightly objectional, I should have to explicitly opt-in and say YES.
Firefox is setting a precedent by moving in this direction, and they’ve showed their hand. There’s only more where this came from, and I won’t tolerate it, even if I can turn it off.
When the Firefox terms and conditions drama happened some months back, that was the push I needed to switch to Librewolf. It’s a Firefox fork with privacy-respecting settings out of the gate, no sponsored content, no ads, uBlock pre-installed, and absolutely zero AI. If you’re a Firefox user, I recommend you try it too.
Thanks I already did that, but it still ticks me off that I had to find out they added this while using the browser. This shit should be off by default.
It doesn’t.
Installed Firefox from the Mint repos. It does.*
*Source: Me, just tried it.
Well, mine doesn’t. I’m not going to search how to enable it. I will just keep using the best browser there is and donating to Servo.
It does if you have a default install
Arch Linux package maintainers seem to have disabled it by default unless I did something and forgot
The article does say that we should always be able to turn off the AI part.
Waterfox it is.
Long ago, the Four Fox Nations lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the Firefox Nation attacked.
A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new developer, a script kiddy named Aang. And although his python skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he’s ready to save anyone. But I believe Aang can save the world.
there is a mobile waterfox too now
It’s the only browser I have on my phone, it works beautifully.
I just got Waterfox this morning. Pretty dope
Waterfox is Firefox.
I’m holding out for EarthFox
Save us
LadybirdServo, you’re our only hope.Too bad it’s made by someone who promotes ‘great replacement’ theory and stands with fascists.
So what alternative do you suggest?
Are we supposed to only use products and services from people whom we agree with completely on their full set of personal beliefs?
I hate to be the one to tell you this. If you mostly agree with a fascist, maybe that’s a sign of something. And yes, shaming fascists is in fact, a good thing.
I have this person tagged as a fascist so…this tracks
Mobile app? I don’t see a tag option on my desktop. I’m pretty sure I used to tag people a lot when I used that other site.
This is a pretty gnarly one to just ignore.
Yeah, great replacement isnt an “Oh well, let’s just agree to disagree” type of thing.
Yes. I can and I will. You cannot stop me, I am mad with power.
Just a bit of fascism, as a treat?
No, but why get behind a fascist sympathiser when a better project exists: servo.org.
Moving to a technically better project is a no brainer
When it concerns fascism? How the fuck do you even dare to ask that question?
Lemmy isn’t much better.
Edit: If people don’t know what I’m referring to, this comment sums it up well.
But on Lemmy I can block the devs and all of .ml
That’s user choice baby
There is the part where moderation tools seem almost intentionally left out. This place is almost as open to manipulation as 4chan.
Remember when 4chan used to be progressive, libertarian, (uh, and racist)?
Rememver when 4chan used to be progressive
If it ever was, it had to have happened sometime in the middle of its existence, cuz it sure as hell wasn’t that when it launched and sure as hell isn’t that now.
It was before and during the time of “Anonymous the Hacker known as 4chan”.
And yeah, my point was that it was easy to manipulate into being a far-right Nazi hellhole, instead of, you know, a more progressive (but still racist) and libertarian hellhole.
Kind of was progressive, issue is that Moot thought it was a good idea to give the nazis their own place, where they begun radicalizing each other, and even planned harassment campaigns.
And even then, a lot of “4chan progressives” only learned the concept of harassment campaigns, which they turned into what many call “cancel culture”. I’m not saying that all callouts are bad, but often people don’t want to resolve it in private, the “resolve it in private” for the callouter means the other ceases all online presence after a dox threat in private, or at worst it’s being used to get rid of an annoying creator they hated. Often all with the old 4chan-style “you can lie a little bit or more as long as you manage to control the narrative” mentality. Not to mention that the right figured out they can manipulate leftists into toxic callout campaigns.
Also if you ever seen a person saying “why don’t we give a shitton of antidepressants for gender dysphoria instead of hormones?”, that was either a former 4chan progressive, or was influenced by one, since a lot of people who became “mental health positive” due to Project Chanology usually did in a very performative opposition to Scientology’s anti-psychiatry.
Alternative and progressive used to be more synonymous
And I’m pro-choice!
-creates new account and then blocks own primary-
I’m actually not sure what you’re trying to say tbh. Sorry I’m dumb.
On Ladybird, you can block yourself from supporting the devs
One of the reasons I switched to a PieFed server. I’ve been happy with the switch though, it feels generally smoother in my browser as well. That’s the beauty of the Fediverse. Even on a whole different platform, I’m still able to participate in this discussion hosted on a Lemmy server.
This is whataboutery.
Multiple things can be shitty at the same time though…
Everything is shitty, just different shades. 50 shades of shit.
How? You’re denigrating a product made by a fascist on a product made by a fascist.
What are you talking about? Any links?
I’m not disagreeing, I just haven’t heard this about Lemmy yet
.ml is a tankie instance. The main Lemmy dev is an admin on there, and is definitely a tankie.
His username is also a fascist dictator, iirc.
Eh, it’s more complicated, it’s a Haitian revolutionary and the first emperor of Haiti post-revolution. (Functionally a dictatorship)
He killed most of the remaining colonists, enforced plantation labor, and was overthrown after like 2-3 years, but a lot of haiti now remembers him mostly for abolishing slavery and there’s a lot of revisionism or justification for his worse acts.
So like its hard to know what someone who likes him knows / thinks about him.
“abolished slavery”, “enforced plantation labor”
uh… this really sounds like one of those “pick one” moments.
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works is a good resource
Just disable the feature or use one of the great Firefox forks like Librewolf or Waterfox. Maybe even Iceweasel.
What about Servo?
Any good browsers that use it available yet?
still mozilla
edit: I get it, stop replying
You can’t tell me what to do :3
Not since 2020 when Mozilla laid them off. They are now with the Linux Foundation Europe and they accept donations.
Nope, Mozilla gave up on Servo in 2020. It‘s now governed by the Linux Foundation Europe.
Servo hasn’t had anything to do with mozilla for five years
The world has really gone to shit if the cryptobrowser is our only hope
free bottom surgery :3
I hope enough people remain on this AI infested ghost ship that it can keep providing a base for librewolf.
OK, what happened?
“AI should always be a choice—something people can easily turn off." “It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.”
How does he not get how contradictory these positions sound. Really a missed opportunity to brand themselves as the browser without AI bullshit and gain users who want to get away from that crap. Sure, they promise it’ll have an off switch, but even if that’s true, they’re still wasting a lot of their very limited budget pursuing it. Really shows where their priorities are.
Also, it’s already not true. You can turn AI off, but not in the regular settings - you need to enter about:config and search for “browser.ml”. Anything that’s only available in about:config is not “easy” for the average user, and “browser.ml” isn’t exactly an intuitive name, either.
I really hope Firefox gets forked, and ends up like OpenOffice
Firefox has many excellent forks already.
zipzap your wish is granted:
LibreWolf is not a fork, though. It’s a customised version of FF, so every shit they introduce has to be painstakingly removed by the LW team, provided that is even possible. (See Manifest V3 in Chrome.)
LibreWolf is not a fork, though.
They duplicate the code, creating a “fork” under their control, and make independent changes to the code. That is all that is needed to satisfy the “fork” definition.
Interesting, because there is no mention of that anywhere on their website. Indeed, the workflow overview in their source repo clearly states that in order to build LibreWolf, you need the current Firefox source tree, and this is reflected in the Makefile, which fetches the Firefox source tarball associated with the same version. Nothing points to a repository they created at any prior point.
Can you link to some official statement that supports this claim?
there is no mention of that anywhere on their website.
A custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom.
This project is a custom and independent version of Firefox, …
LibreWolf is a free and open-source fork of Firefox, …
They take Firefox, make changes to it, then release it. As such, it is a fork. More specifically a “soft fork” since they continue to pull changes from upstream (Firefox).
EDIT: Oh I see you’re focused on the “duplication of the code” part. A bad phrasing on my part. It doesn’t matter the specifics of how they pull in the source code, it is pulled in and used as the basis for librewolf’s modifications.
They could even pull it in on first launch and compile the latest version of Firefox with their modifications for subsequent launches and it would by all means be a fork, since they are shipping a modified version.
It’s literally impossible to maintain a modern browser without extreme funding and competent engineers
It’s not “literally” impossible, but it’s damn close.
I hope they consider making a hard fork in light of this news. I use it and it’s great. Perfect sweetspot of privacy, simplicity and “power tools”. Many people might not want the default automatic cookie clearing on exit, but you can easily disable it or, better yet, whitelist domains you want to stay logged into.
Theres a bazillion forks
A bazillion understaffed forks ranging from unusable because they have more tinfoil hats than developers, and unusable because the single developer doesn’t understand why remote debugging shouldn’t be enabled by default.
I tried Florp or whatever and it just kept crashing. Went back to good old FF real fast.
The issue is not the code, is all the infrastructure needed to develop something as heavy as a browser, which is what they have captive
Definitely we need a fork that’s independent of Mozilla with a real non profit organisation behind, and these days we also need a permanent non-profit clause.
Can you elaborate on infrastructure part? I thought dev efforts are the key issue?
waterfox has been pretty good for me
At least they seem commited to keep it a choice instead of the mandatory crap that pops up everywhere. Choice is fine, and maybe it helps to get Firefox back onto peoples computers so they keep their seat at the table when important decisions regarding the web are made.
New CEO promises to bring AI to Firefox
Mozilla names insider Enzor-DeMeo as CEO, looks to add AI features to Firefox
New CEO Enzor-DeMeo brings out hammer and cock with the promise smack Mozilla’s cock with a hammer and ruin everything.
tbf, firefox left the room years ago.
Gallagher and his sledge-o-matic have entered the chat
This is sensationalist bullshit.
how so?
In that all that happened is that Firefox is considering adding optional opt-in features that use AI, and people are acting like they’ve just declared they’re cancelling the entire app and replacing it with some imagined AI slop
AI features are already in Firefox, and you can’t disable them in the regular settings, only in about:config which requires websearch. Also, AI translation is already mandatory in the Firefox online documentation, which the localization teams were very unhappy about.
Maybe because we’ve lived through countless ‘its optional’ changes that storm wing optional pretty damned quick.
These features are unwanted by many, keep increasing, and the methods used to turn each individual piece off keep changing, growing, and moving, and that’s JUST on the user level.
It’s at least an order of magnitude worse to have to pull the unwanted stuff back out if you’re forking Firefox.
Mozilla could make this straightforward and easy.
They are specifically NOT doing that ON PURPOSE.
Why do you suppose that is?
So don’t opt-in. They’re opt-in and not being forced on you.If you don’t like it then use another browser. I’m happy with Firefox and will not opt-in to the ai stuff.Mountains and mole hills man.Apparently I was wrong. Can’t be assed replying to the people telling me as frankly I’m fighting not to want to throw myself off a bridge today and can’t even begin to have a discussion.
They are not opt-in, they are on by default and opt-out AI features. They said so themselves in their public communications. Also, they aren’t future possible considerations, they are concrete plans that are underway and have funds allocated and feature goals set.
Removed the wrong info from my comment.
They’re using funds and resources to build ai bullshit that very few are asking for. It’s the fact that there is already limited resources for open source and libre softwares, and out of all the things they are choosing those that are already so clearly disdained by their dwindling user base
their announcement or whatever literally said opt out, not opt in
It would only be like the 20th time “optional” features became intrusive, difficult to opt out of, then actually required, just as soon as they think they’ve boiled the frog enough.
The toot does explain nothing!!!
Why is the hammer there?
EDIT: /s people… I am totally tired today I forgot to add it…
I think you meant to type “Why is the hammer there?”, so I’ll explain that:
“Hitting your penis with a hammer” is a metaphor for doing something obviously terrible. In this case, chasing the latest fad of the month, AI.
Yeah god damn typo and I forgot the /s
I hate Firefox for adding ai…
Awww, you’re so confuuused! I jus wanna squeeze ya 🥰
Thanks you clearly understood the joke! (Maybe I forgot the /s? dont get all the downvotes…)
Also yaaay I wanted to be squeezed! But please not to hard… Otherwise I fart.
