I personally don’t HATE ai but I don’t want it in my browser or email or anything like that. I have a local llm I use for random stuff all the time but I don’t need or want a company viewing everything I’m doing, adding buttons in places I’m likely to accidentally push, or training their shit on my dumb behavior. ai has destroyed much of the Internet already to the point that you almost need to use an llm in order to get any useful information during a search. Otherwise you’re just filtering through ai generated webpages with the highest seo possible.
Browsers don’t need LLMs
And their telemetry metrics will tell them people overwhelmingly keep the switch on.
Because the vast majority don’t read release notes these days?
I have enough trouble keeping with the IRL release notes of how my democracy is falling apart. Forger checking them on my browser.
You don’t have to read the release notes. It literally puts it front and center in your face the first time you launch it after this update is applied.
Because the people who turn off the AI are the same people who turn off telemetry
People overwhelmingly kept autosave off. People just don’t like changing settings. I’m hoping Mozilla knows this.
EDIT: Typo
Interesting read, thanks.
I’ve already switched over to LibreWolf a month or two ago. Clean, simple, and it just works.
Do you know its it’s the same on android?
There is no LibreWolf for Android, there is IronFox tho
Got it. Thanks
Like the other commenter said, there isn’t a LibreWolf for android, but I am using IronFox and it’s been fine. I don’t see a huge improvement or anything, but I don’t see any degradation either. So, so far it’s been a fine alternative.
Thanks
Does it come with an equivalent to uBlock? Can you port over your bookmarks from firefox?
It comes with ublock installed by default, it also defaults to having certain features enabled by default like clearing cookies on browser exit, letter boxing enabled, and webgl disabled. This may or may not hamper your usage of the browser, but you can enable/disable this stuff via the settings.
You can also go to the Firefox extension marketplace and install extensions natively.
I, the laziest man possible, have been motivated to switch already. Waterfox is working just fine.
The only useful thing ive found for AI is its ability to read text from an image. Which is good for taking serial numbers from a photo, and copying from an app that otherwise doesnt allow copying on phone. Thats it. A tool.
that function is just reskinned OCR, though
which I guess you could consider as AI and that it is a similar training data structure? not my area lol
I do also think that AI has some use as a search engine. I haven’t used it much for this purpose at all, but a while back there was a specific type of engineering analysis I needed to do, and I couldn’t remember the exact terms or topics to look up. chat GPT got me into the right area so I could look at the appropriate resources. in that specific scenario, it was better than a standard search engine
Of course once I found the materials I was looking for, I stopped using the chat bot and you know use those materials
So, there’s a “bug”, though I expect to FF it’s a feature: If you individually block all of the AI features, then click on the master switch to block all AI, everything’s great. But if you revert that master switch suddenly it “forgets” all of your settings and shit is activated again.
It seems by design. And since it’s opt in, if FF “accidentally” disables the master switch (I’m betting it will eventually) you lose that extra layer of protection. OH, and I had disabled EVERYTHING in registry (about:config) before this and translations were still available. I guess it’s time for me to explore other FF-core options…
It’s just a lazy/poor design.
Instead of each setting having its own bit with one ‘override’ bit, they just set override by setting each bit.
I’d say you’re being generous calling it poor design. It’s actually reverting to “default” on settings when you uncheck instead of storing individual bits and honoring those. Why not revert to opted out - OK, that may be lazy to use a single template, but that’s not the way some of their other “master” options work. And I’ve been a FF user since it’s first releases, so this isn’t some Mozilla hate. And I won’t be going to anything Chromium and because of inertia I may just stick to FF.
It’s also crazy that I have been manually configuring away from AI since it wasn’t even opt out… it was forced in. Most aren’t going to do that and Mozilla knew it going in. And I’ve already seen those registry settings revert once. Since this control option literally should have been the first feature for AI delivered and their entire AI push has an untrustworthy stink, I’ll say it again: I await a future release bumping the setting back “on”. “Oopsie! you can just turn it back off or wait for the next patch” after Mozilla and their partners collect their information across millions of users that aren’t paying attention.
Remember when they had a “kill switch” for javascript?
It’s available as an extension: https://webextension.org/listing/javascript-toggler.html
Yeah. Used to be native. Like the slop kill switch currently is. Then won’t be.
Yeah, as long as it made any sense to browse the web without JS. These days you need at least an allow list.
And immediately blocked.
I’m not against AI, I use it, but I want to be using it on my terms, not have it shoved into everything I use.
I kept the auto translate on. It’s the only thing I can think of that I want to just have happen.
?
all you have to do is click on Settings > AI Controls. You’ll then see a very bold and prominent option called ‘Block AI Enhancements.’
I don’t see it on mobile though.
On Android or iOS? I’m pretty sure the iOS app is just a re-skinned Safari, isn’t it?
Are you on FF148?
Supposedly. Says 148 in About.
Pretty sure this is about desktop. Mobile doesn’t have the same kind of features, if at all. Does Mobile have anything else besides local translation?
So while previously the translation feature was supported by an extension, now it has to be enabled through ai.
Hate it.
The only people that are into LLMs are scientist (which is reasonable) and tech bros.
The later just think it’s useful while for 99% of people there just isn’t a usecase.
I started using Zen Browser, it’s a fork of FF. Sick of this Mozilla nonsense
WaterFox
Not working for me, OpenAI still exists :D
I’m going to unblock telemetry just long enough for them to see me hit this kill switch
