I seriously don't know anyone who likes this crap.
I know lots of people who like using AI in its own app, like GPT or Gemini, but noone that likes it forced into other apps like their browser.
I think it is also important to keep an eye on elderly and young users.
I will never forget watching my Mom use her computer and listen to her complain that her browser always keeps saying it needs a “critical update”— and to click the link! 👀….
Well, friends, she had been clicking Pop Up Spam for over a year. Who knows what kinds of crazy programs, viruses 🦠, and browser extensions she setup.
We ended up having to wipe the entire computer. …. While I was on “vacation”.
I would love to join you but I could never get Vivaldi to sync. Spent hours trying to figure it out and support wasn't helpful. Maybe I'll try again since librewolf doesn't seem to be available on mobile. Glad you've got a good new browser setup.
You are doing the right thing, but... but AI slop is now increasingly invading the internet, so if you don't have AI in your browser, you'll have AI in your internet. Sometimes I can only find AI results for technical questions, unless I search Reddit.
This seems to work to disable AI shit from the search engine itself, but not to avoid finding AI generated shit in websites, which are pre-generated and posted to low effort WP sites full of ads and shitty contents. In this case the swearing trick does not work.
There should be a way to turn off AI summaries. It's not like web browsers haven't been logging and indexing all our searches in data center archives for many years before AI was a thing.
there's several forks, iirc librewolf scrubs the AI out at the code level already. I know they're not equipped to go independent, but idk where their line is for too many code changes
Can’t I have anything? Must everything be tainted by a dumb idea started by someone else. No company wants to be different or better, they just wanna feed us all to the slaughter.
I agree with the sentiment but a sad and weird side effect of the proliferation of chatbots is ridiculously verbose content (articles and code). To some extent it causes a problem that it then solves (poorly).
For example, some coding languages require the coder to write many configuration files and statements. If the users of the language now use “AI” to write those, what encouragement do the maintainers of the language have to make it concise? The coding language user then becomes the LLM moreso than the human. Whereas previously the purpose of the coding language was by itself to be directly the way the human instructs the computer.
Everything in that coding example it applicable for other content (to the extent the writers and readers use an algorithm to filter/search content). So hopefully you are right and people read the content directly themselves …
Steps of enshittification:
- being able to opt out
- make it harder to opt out
- send updates that reset your preferences now and then
- not being able to opt out, instead allow only the user to customize it
- create other features depending on it and set a paywall.
There are no more alternatives. In the end the tech bros will win, and we will have ONE internet and ONE browser. All owned by one of the 2 or 3 megacorps that will remain once they have eaten one another.
To everyone shitting on this: when is the last time you donated to the project? If you have agreed to a privacy policy or cookie agreement for ANYTHING recently (I don't care if it's your insurance website that "needed" it), haven't donated at all to Mozilla and are still shitting on this, congrats, you did this.
1) do you meet the two simple parameters I set forth? (Have not donated + take issue with this)
2) If you do, what exactly have you done to justify being annoyed at this? Who exactly owes you a free browser that is privacy respecting?
Your questions is non sensical. Seems you are a capitalism enjoyer? Well I am not. I want stuff to be done because it's better for society, not because profit.
No one is going to do it for you. And no I'm absolutely not a capitalism enjoyer, I try and self host/use open source as much as possible.
Ok so apart from complaining, what exactly have you done to contribute to the solution? What are you and everyone else on here doing to prevent things like this from happening?
It's very simple root cause analysis. Yes on one side greed at C-suite AI Hype etc are all the usual suspects. That's never going to change. Complaining on here is just slacktivism.
If you contribute/use open source, submit bugs etc, good then you're doing what you can. If you're not, you have no right to complain that someone will starve their family to provide you a nice cozy privacy respecting browser. That's not how the current world works. I didn't make it, I didn't choose it, I damn sure don't like it, but I'm not going to lie to myself on reality.
Vote with your wallets. Make a fork. Switch to it en masse. Make them regret dumb decisions like this. Just complaining on here that no one is doing the work for you is not helping anyone, and is exactly how we came to live in a SaaS economy.
Do I have to build literally everything that exists and I want or need to use by myself? Do you think society works if everyone does everything for themselves? What logic is this?
And no, I do not have to earn the right to complain about capitalist bullshit. But I assume I shouldn't expect too much from someone who throws around the "vote with your wallets" (lmao) crap. Or thinks consumers are to blame for their own oppression.
Yes keep shouting on Reddit, the Mozilla foundation will definitely come here, pay attention, and make sure you have a perfect browser all for free. Don't lift a finger to contribute, just complain until everyone comes and builds alll the projects you ever need, OK?
I would love to donate to support Firefox, but all the time I see people say that donating to Mozilla doesn’t mean the money goes to Firefox, instead it goes to the AI advocacy stuff or whatever the hell else Mozilla does that’s NOT Firefox development, like in this post for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/s/Tz3Q4ZNDyu
Mozilla has plenty of money. Unfortunately the C-suite has become highly corrupt, and care more about filling their own pockets than making a good browser. This happened several years ago (pre-2020 at least)
The CEO herself get some 7 million USD/year. The CTO and CFO are also very well compensated. Money that could be much better spent on Firefox/Servo development.
“ He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.”
To me that’s the most important part of that article, there seems to be an implication that ad tech companies like Google are willing to pay to get Firefox to fight ad blocking and the ceo hasn’t completely ruled that out….
So, a browser company with a 3% market share and no other business model is going to out-AI Microsoft and Chrome, both of which are throwing unimaginable amounts of capital at their AI centers while leveraging their user-lock in to juice usage rates?
Even if it was a good goal to have, and its not, how would that even be possible?
Their goal should have been to stabd out as the non-AI alterrnative, whixh would have undoubtedly increased their user base.
Instead, they will now lose what litte user pool they have. Including people like me who have been using Firefox for 20+ years.
The only concrete thing mentioned in the article is the addition of an AI wimdow option where you can open a chatbot in separate window (presumably with tabs for conversations) with your choice of model.
IMO this sounds fine. It presumably would add a layer of anonymity to chatbot interactions that you wouldn't have using Chat GPT or whatever directly (similar to Duck Duck Go's AI feature). Also you could choose to just not use the feature and be unaffected.
Welp, that's them gone. I know Librewolf is an offshoot but whether they'll be able to disable these features is up to them. If they can I'll switch to that entirely
I am not surprised at all. For the last years Mozilla was trying very hard to enshitify Firefox as much as possible. This AI nonsense is just a cherry on a cake.
They keep on pushing one dumb shit after another while users wait for years for basic features such as tabbed UI for android tablets.
I was using Firefox for decades but recently it's becoming harder and harder. Recently I started to use Vivaldi quite a lot and this is night and day when it comes to UX and UI.
They built their own Gecko engine wchich is great and literally last alternative to Chromium. Unfortunately their retarded UX designers and product managers will just kill it.
Yeah I'm super surprised how many people are still tolerating Firefox when it's been behind the curve in features and adoption for a decade now. It's on Safari levels
Yeah it stinks that we're all going to have to download another browser and use that instead.
This is legitimately completely air headed. We use FireFox because we don't want all of the nonsense that come with "modern browsers." They're just going to screw everything up.
Yes, that’s it! Without pop-ups and harassment it might be liveable. But that’s the thing: they put money into it, and now they need to justify the money.
Uninstalls Firefox...
Been using Duck Duck Go browser how is that?
I seriously don't know anyone who likes this crap. I know lots of people who like using AI in its own app, like GPT or Gemini, but noone that likes it forced into other apps like their browser.
what are they even trying to accomplish? asking AI nowadays is like asking the time in the middle of a crowd, not a problem at all
If becomes just like all the other modern AI browsers, why would anyone use it?
sleep pocket nine governor tease humorous slap knee jellyfish automatic
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
Back to iceweasel it is
I'm so tired of living in an AI soaked world already. Jesus fuckin christ.
They're just getting started.
It’s not even the good AI we were promised by sci-fi authors. It’s technically not even AI. We just call it that because it’s good for marketing.
Do they not know WHY people use Firefox?
Because we anticipate a better AI implementation in Firefox than other browsers of course!
I think it is also important to keep an eye on elderly and young users.
I will never forget watching my Mom use her computer and listen to her complain that her browser always keeps saying it needs a “critical update”— and to click the link! 👀….
Well, friends, she had been clicking Pop Up Spam for over a year. Who knows what kinds of crazy programs, viruses 🦠, and browser extensions she setup.
We ended up having to wipe the entire computer. …. While I was on “vacation”.
This is such an idiotic business decision, I think we're at the top of the bubble.
Well this sucks, time to uninstall. Firefox is dead to me.
Welp, maybe I can find an old copy of Netscape Navigator somewhere, and use that...FireFox is dead to me
fuck you firefox and bye bye
[deleted]
I would love to join you but I could never get Vivaldi to sync. Spent hours trying to figure it out and support wasn't helpful. Maybe I'll try again since librewolf doesn't seem to be available on mobile. Glad you've got a good new browser setup.
You are doing the right thing, but... but AI slop is now increasingly invading the internet, so if you don't have AI in your browser, you'll have AI in your internet. Sometimes I can only find AI results for technical questions, unless I search Reddit.
Does the trick of inserting an expletive into your query still work?
“What’s wrong with Firefox” becomes “what the fuck is wrong with Firefox” and you get page results instead of some computer dream.
This seems to work to disable AI shit from the search engine itself, but not to avoid finding AI generated shit in websites, which are pre-generated and posted to low effort WP sites full of ads and shitty contents. In this case the swearing trick does not work.
Well.
Fuck.
There should be a way to turn off AI summaries. It's not like web browsers haven't been logging and indexing all our searches in data center archives for many years before AI was a thing.
Truly is nothing safe.
Can't they just make a fork for all the AI slop... Call Robofox or something.
there's several forks, iirc librewolf scrubs the AI out at the code level already. I know they're not equipped to go independent, but idk where their line is for too many code changes
Bring it on. 😈
Can’t I have anything? Must everything be tainted by a dumb idea started by someone else. No company wants to be different or better, they just wanna feed us all to the slaughter.
Line must go up.
Bye Firefox.
I have never used my browser and thought "gee I need inaccurate summary of the thing I'm capable of reading myself"
I agree with the sentiment but a sad and weird side effect of the proliferation of chatbots is ridiculously verbose content (articles and code). To some extent it causes a problem that it then solves (poorly).
For example, some coding languages require the coder to write many configuration files and statements. If the users of the language now use “AI” to write those, what encouragement do the maintainers of the language have to make it concise? The coding language user then becomes the LLM moreso than the human. Whereas previously the purpose of the coding language was by itself to be directly the way the human instructs the computer.
Everything in that coding example it applicable for other content (to the extent the writers and readers use an algorithm to filter/search content). So hopefully you are right and people read the content directly themselves …
What are some good browser options that aren't bending over for AI garbage?
Waterfox is also an option. I've been using it for about a year. https://www.waterfox.com/blog/no-ai-here-response-to-mozilla/
Librewolf. It’s a fork of Firefox without the slop.
Unfortunately nearly all other browsers are chromium based
No :(. But as long as they don't push it and actually let people opt out (unlike google) or let those who want AI opt in, it doesn't bother me.
Steps of enshittification: - being able to opt out - make it harder to opt out - send updates that reset your preferences now and then - not being able to opt out, instead allow only the user to customize it - create other features depending on it and set a paywall.
It bothers me a bit. Having to manually opt out of everything all the time is a bit of a pain.
I really hope they do more of an opt in model, rather than opt out.
Wellp time to get rid of them
Well that’s shit
Raise your hand if you're asking for this... I'm waiting
I'm so glad that more people are hating on Firefox.
People were irrationally committed to Firefox, very similarly to the way people are irrationally committed to Star Trek.
The longest time Star Trek would ship crap and nobody would call them on it. Star Wars too
As long as you can keep shipping crap, and people will still stand up for you, nothing will ever change, nothing will ever improve.
Firefox has existed solely as a way to funnel money into the pockets of Mitchell Bake
Here's what Mitchell Baker has made as CEO of Firefox while the company/product imploded.
2020: ~$3 million+
2021: ~$5.59 million.
2022: ~$6.9 million.
She's just used Firefox as a way to funnel money into her pocket.
Google needed a browser competitor to Chrome, so they were happy to keep funding it.
They we're doing that to avoid looking like a monopoly.
It's a great job if you can get it.
Shit. I'll destroy Firefox for $1M/year.
I think the question is: What alternative is there really? Of course Firefox doesn't deserve any sympathy, but what else can I use?
There are no more alternatives. In the end the tech bros will win, and we will have ONE internet and ONE browser. All owned by one of the 2 or 3 megacorps that will remain once they have eaten one another.
Goodbye Firefox, hello Librewolf.
Fuck it, I'm going back to Lynx
'Error 403: Forbidden. Invalid User-Agent header "Lynx".'
It’s dead to me.
To everyone shitting on this: when is the last time you donated to the project? If you have agreed to a privacy policy or cookie agreement for ANYTHING recently (I don't care if it's your insurance website that "needed" it), haven't donated at all to Mozilla and are still shitting on this, congrats, you did this.
No, I did not do this. What is wrong with you?
1) do you meet the two simple parameters I set forth? (Have not donated + take issue with this) 2) If you do, what exactly have you done to justify being annoyed at this? Who exactly owes you a free browser that is privacy respecting?
There in lies the problem.
No one is going to do it for you. And no I'm absolutely not a capitalism enjoyer, I try and self host/use open source as much as possible.
Ok so apart from complaining, what exactly have you done to contribute to the solution? What are you and everyone else on here doing to prevent things like this from happening?
It's very simple root cause analysis. Yes on one side greed at C-suite AI Hype etc are all the usual suspects. That's never going to change. Complaining on here is just slacktivism.
If you contribute/use open source, submit bugs etc, good then you're doing what you can. If you're not, you have no right to complain that someone will starve their family to provide you a nice cozy privacy respecting browser. That's not how the current world works. I didn't make it, I didn't choose it, I damn sure don't like it, but I'm not going to lie to myself on reality.
Vote with your wallets. Make a fork. Switch to it en masse. Make them regret dumb decisions like this. Just complaining on here that no one is doing the work for you is not helping anyone, and is exactly how we came to live in a SaaS economy.
I am sorry, but are you stupid or something?
Do I have to build literally everything that exists and I want or need to use by myself? Do you think society works if everyone does everything for themselves? What logic is this?
And no, I do not have to earn the right to complain about capitalist bullshit. But I assume I shouldn't expect too much from someone who throws around the "vote with your wallets" (lmao) crap. Or thinks consumers are to blame for their own oppression.
Yes keep shouting on Reddit, the Mozilla foundation will definitely come here, pay attention, and make sure you have a perfect browser all for free. Don't lift a finger to contribute, just complain until everyone comes and builds alll the projects you ever need, OK?
I would love to donate to support Firefox, but all the time I see people say that donating to Mozilla doesn’t mean the money goes to Firefox, instead it goes to the AI advocacy stuff or whatever the hell else Mozilla does that’s NOT Firefox development, like in this post for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/s/Tz3Q4ZNDyu
I donate every year. Duck off.
OK then you did not do this? I feel like my parameters were very clear lol
I donated to Thunderbird and I have a subscription to Mozilla VPN :)
Mozilla has plenty of money. Unfortunately the C-suite has become highly corrupt, and care more about filling their own pockets than making a good browser. This happened several years ago (pre-2020 at least)
The CEO herself get some 7 million USD/year. The CTO and CFO are also very well compensated. Money that could be much better spent on Firefox/Servo development.
I do not recommend sponsoring Mozilla.
Donated 1.5 months ago. Make sure I donate every year.
Sadly, very few people will donate.
They won't vote with their wallets then complain about shit service.
“ He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.”
To me that’s the most important part of that article, there seems to be an implication that ad tech companies like Google are willing to pay to get Firefox to fight ad blocking and the ceo hasn’t completely ruled that out….
I switched back to Firefox from Chrome for the adblock, and I do not feel very special.
I would have defended Mozilla and Firefox til my dying breath.....until now. It's a no to Chrome or Chrome based browsers, but yikes!
Well gosh golly gee I wonder why!
So, a browser company with a 3% market share and no other business model is going to out-AI Microsoft and Chrome, both of which are throwing unimaginable amounts of capital at their AI centers while leveraging their user-lock in to juice usage rates?
Even if it was a good goal to have, and its not, how would that even be possible?
Their goal should have been to stabd out as the non-AI alterrnative, whixh would have undoubtedly increased their user base. Instead, they will now lose what litte user pool they have. Including people like me who have been using Firefox for 20+ years.
Can Netscape come back now?
if we're going back in time, I vote for a new ask jeeves browser
Mosaic
Got some bad news…Mozilla owns Netscape
Is iCab still being developed?
Well, Firefox has been my main browser for as long as I can remember, but I guess that's coming to an end.
What's even left to switch to that isn't loaded down with crap? Brave?
Librewolf, it'll feel like home.
I have a bunch of extensions I'm using in Firefox. Would it be possible to use it in LibreWolf?
Safari on Mac OS, DuckDuckGo on all Platforms
Oh duckduckgo available outside mac now nice! Even on Linux?
For Linux you will need to use browser extensions. I don’t use that platform, so I don’t have first hand experience.
Duckduckgo
Pretty much, give it time and Brave will fall. They all do.
The alternative is just using whatever browser is on your device and add extensions
https://preview.redd.it/v2e5dwg1rn7g1.png?width=225&format=png&auto=webp&s=be7fe6407fbc0aa4d98627690edea98456836678
How do we feel about brave?
I'm using on Android and it's ok but has AI summaries etc built in as default
They all do. Even DuckDuckGo
The only search engine I can get behind anymore is Evosia. If they’re getting my data either way at least some trees get plated.
That’s the promise anyway. Might not actually be true. Who knows what’s real it today’s society anymore
Who knows indeed
Bah! What's a good browser to use any more? Brave? Safari?
I read the article, what is an AI bowser? What does that even entail to a normal user?
The only concrete thing mentioned in the article is the addition of an AI wimdow option where you can open a chatbot in separate window (presumably with tabs for conversations) with your choice of model.
IMO this sounds fine. It presumably would add a layer of anonymity to chatbot interactions that you wouldn't have using Chat GPT or whatever directly (similar to Duck Duck Go's AI feature). Also you could choose to just not use the feature and be unaffected.
God please no. Why? Who even uses that shit?
Welp, that's them gone. I know Librewolf is an offshoot but whether they'll be able to disable these features is up to them. If they can I'll switch to that entirely
The CEO explicitly said you will be able to turn them off.
Why even bother then?
He said forcing it on people that don’t want it is a way to produce backlash. Like MS Copilot.
Genuinely means less than congealed jizz. I'll trust the community to pull through on this one
And I will never use it now
At this pace I guess honestly we gotta switch to Lynx to avoid this.
RIP firefox
Me when their user share splinters even further to other niche browsers
I am not surprised at all. For the last years Mozilla was trying very hard to enshitify Firefox as much as possible. This AI nonsense is just a cherry on a cake.
They keep on pushing one dumb shit after another while users wait for years for basic features such as tabbed UI for android tablets.
I was using Firefox for decades but recently it's becoming harder and harder. Recently I started to use Vivaldi quite a lot and this is night and day when it comes to UX and UI.
They built their own Gecko engine wchich is great and literally last alternative to Chromium. Unfortunately their retarded UX designers and product managers will just kill it.
Yeah I'm super surprised how many people are still tolerating Firefox when it's been behind the curve in features and adoption for a decade now. It's on Safari levels
Yeah it stinks that we're all going to have to download another browser and use that instead.
This is legitimately completely air headed. We use FireFox because we don't want all of the nonsense that come with "modern browsers." They're just going to screw everything up.
What is an AI browser?
They put chatgpt on the side are they're gonna constantly harass you with pop ups to use it
Yes, that’s it! Without pop-ups and harassment it might be liveable. But that’s the thing: they put money into it, and now they need to justify the money.
buzzword soup
Scam tech.