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
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.
Yeah, you can also opt out of your planet being demolished to build the intergalactic highway, the form is in the basement.
Incidentally, most of the new llm bullshits are on by default and can't be turn off in the settings, you need to go to about:config and search for .ml to do so (not to be confused with .ml instance of lemmy which you also can't easily opt out of). Obviously this settings aren't synchronised between instances by "synchronise all settings" thingy which they need my personal info for, why would it, so you need to do it every time. Also also they sometimes revert back with major updates, because obviously they are.
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.
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.
That's a good question. I'd personally argue that it's different in that the adblockers are not an inbuilt part of Firefox, they're made by extension developers. This is built right into the browser.
It's more of a concern with google summaries that show up at the top of search results because it completely removes the need to click on any of the websites it pulls from. Ideally a link summary just lets you figure out which link you need without clicking on and looking at each one.
Thanks for adding that detail, makes sense. I was thinking the link previews were yeah more like the google results. Hover over and not have to go to the site.
No, it's on by default, it has access to everything you're browsing and doing fuck knows what with it, and you need to know that it is doing it and unless you've read it somewhere you don't know that it's there.
thing that AI is actually pretty decent at (summarizing text)
That's so not true it's not even funny.
I mean yeah, it could be worse, everything could be worse. Still, not good, not good at all.
you only encounter it by interacting with the browser in an atypical way
Leaving my pointer on a random place that happens to be a link is atypical? I don't think it is. I had this pop up to me a couple of days ago and I didn't even understand what could've triggered it, I was wondering if I clicked something or pressed a key unconsciously.
and the thing it does is a thing that AI is actually pretty decent at (summarizing text)
Pretty decent? Just passable, if the text is about some run-of-the-mill topic.
Doesn't do that for me. I have to hold left click on a link for over a second to trigger it.
And yeah, pretty decent. It can produce a basically summary of a fair amount of text pretty quickly and generally accurately. It's not an expert wordsmith, it won't give a deep and thoughtful analysis of the poem you pointed it at or anything, but that's not the use case. The use case is "give me the key bullet points of this article so I can decide if I should give it more attention.", and it does that job pretty well.
This is absolutely, demonstrably, documentedly not true. It is accurate sometimes, and sometimes it shows you absolute bullshit. When will it be accurate? Who knows. So you can use it only when you don't care about the truth, in which case why even bother, just imagine the article said what you wanted it to say and be done with it
Depends on model tuning. Basically, you can tune a model to hallucinate less, or to write more human-like, but not really both at the same time, at least not for a model you could expect most users to run locally. For this sort of application (summarizing text), you'd tune heavily against hallucination, because ideally your bullet points are going to mostly be made up of direct paraphrase of article text, with a very limited need for fluid writing or anything even vaguely creative.
Basically, you can tune a model to hallucinate less
You can tune it to hallucinate more, you can't tune it to not hallucinate at all, and that's what matters. You need it to be "not at all" if you want it to be useful, otherwise you can never be sure that it's not lying, and you can't check for lies other than reading the article, which defies the whole purpose of it.
Doesn’t do that for me. I have to hold left click on a link for over a second to trigger it.
I misunderstood the previous comments, actually, yeah, it's not triggered the way I assumed.
The use case is “give me the key bullet points of this article so I can decide if I should give it more attention.”, and it does that job pretty well.
I'll put aside all the other complaints I have on my mind, because we've both probably gone through similar discussions, I don't want to get bogged down in yet another, and just say that I honestly can't imagine this being such a useful or time-saving thing in the first place. Like, did it use to be a frequent problem to you to start reading an article, realise you're not interested, and give up on it?
There are a bunch of flags in about:config you can check as well, if you wanna be extra sure they're turned off. Just search for browser.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.
Since the comment you were responding to was edited to strike out "Ladybird" and write "Servo" instead, would you mind editing your comment to clarify you are talking about Ladybird and not Servo?
Thanks for clarifying. As much as I love open source, I'll still want something that can offer a similar experience on both desktop and mobile. For anyone else like me, I'd suggest Waterfox.
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.
You're not dumb, I made a bad joke. I could explain the joke over a few paragraphs, but it still won't be funny. In fact, you'd hate it more for having to read that context. Suffice to say, my ADHD internal dialog jumped from idea to idea until I vomited out something that made me chuckle in the moment.
Sorry, your confusion was collateral damage from my mental explosion.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Its a fork and they can choose to include the changes they want from upstream. They've come out and said they're not adding this AI bullshit. Librewolf has done the same.
So yes, base is firefox, but it's not actually Firefox, in the same way edge uses chrome as its base (not exactly, but similar)
It is much different than this. Edge is built on the Chromium engine, but that's it. Waterfox is Firefox, as it's shipped by Mozilla, only with some theme changes and flags disabled.
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.)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
Discord doesn't like it when it comes to voice-chat in the Android app, sadly (even though I know we should all leave Discord, but Revolt and Matrix can barely hold candles to the flame of its incredibly sophisticated streaming system), but yes, I've been on Waterfox for some time now.
I actually use floorp. It's literally the most customizable Firefox fork. It's the only Firefox fork that allows me to have my tab bar exactly correct the way I want it.
But yeah name's stupid. I kind of love it though. It's so non-serious
It's also a good verb. "I'll floorp it later". "Send me the link, I'll floorp it to myself".
Does it support profiles? If so, I'll give it a floorp, just to see how it floorps.
I'm still not convinced that name isn't an elaborate joke. Like I could download the browser and be typing this comment on it and still think "man, they went all-in on this prank"
you'll have about the same experience with zen+ublock, all told. obviously there's more advanced privacy features you'll lose, but your advertising experience will be about the same, nearly if not identical
As there seems to have been recent confusion about this, just a quick "official" toot to then pin: we haven't and won't support "generative AI" related stuff in LibreWolf. If you see some features like that (like Perplexity search recently, or the link preview feature now) it is solely because it "slipped through". As soon as we become aware of something like this / it gets reported to us, we will remove/disable it ASAP.
Yep. Is basically a firefox stripped from junk. Just remember is very stick on privacy, if something is not visible or some pics don't upload, you just have to enable the site permission from the icon in the navigation bar.
"Firefox is evolving into an agentic browser, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere. Join us at #MozillaIgnite to see how frontier firms are transforming with Firefox and what’s next for the platform. We can’t wait to show you!"
I know I'm gonna get a lot of flack for suggesting this, but Vivaldi feels like what Firefox should have been. More customizability, less AI and sponsored crap. They are the only major browser offering an option for a small, reasonably sized tab bar rather than the tab bars with 3 layers of padding and more whitespace than text.
Additionally, Vivaldi doesn't pester you with twice-a-day update pop-ups or worse, the dreaded "Restart to keep using Firefox," it just gets out of your way like a good browser should.
I tried it before, it was buggy and my tabs locked up. Also since its based on chrome, its very nerfed when it comes to powerful plugins. I didnt like it. My first impression was positive but no, it feels very bloated.
But if you like it and you feel its better than Firefox for you, thats a good thing.
Netscape 3 with integrated mail and news is still the best internet experience that's ever been conceived or designed or implemented. Communicator screwed it all up less than a year later but it was the best while it lasted.
Vivaldi is by far the best browser out there. Its customizability and tab handling is second to none. Anyone not giving it a spin are missing out. Yes, their UI is proprietary, but out of all the things to be concerned about, this aint it. They are based in Norway and made by software engineers who worked on Opera browser who out of principle just wants a good browser which is not in corporate hell.
I stopped using Opera more 15 years ago, shortly before they dropped their own engine.
I did like their customisation options, 20+ years ago they were the only browser supporting mouse gestures too.
But I see no reason why would I want to use what's basically chromium, especially bcs of ad blocking.
Y'all just live with ads? (I don't think sinkholes catch everything.)
Additionally I do not want to support proprietary code if I don't have to.
Who cares if it’s a soft fork as long as it’s open source? The point is to keep the fork clean and if Mozilla fails, the community can just take it over.
Yes, “the community taking over” is the entire ideology behind open source. Thats what it means. Anyone can develop it. It doesn’t mean that it needs to happen, just that part of the freedom you have is to do so. You’re conflating the two.
Dunno how pale moon is doing nowadays, but forks either follow the bigger principles of the base project or wither into obscureness if the base project changes underlying technologies.
I'm still angry that an (optionally) AI browser isn't the worst idea as a headline/dev direction ... if you don't read any further than the headline that is.
I do want or eventually will need some local, foss AI to deal with all the megacorp bs AI that will be just everywhere on the internets (I can't humanly fight the increasing megacorp slop, I need/will need my own AI to help me fight and navigate it, as a freedom necessity).
Someone pls work on that, I don't want to live in an internetless cave/woods for the rest of my life (the cave/woods is what I wish for regardless, it's just a question of my need for internet access).
But no, they decided to hammer their dicks with all the megamatacorp AIs. I mean, it's prob marginally better than to forward ppl to sites or Chrome, but it's not a thing that you would want publicized as a major step/direction, it's at the very least distasteful.
Also AI could theoretically do an even better job at ad blocking and also block other annoying shit like autoplay videos and html5 popups (fuck any web dev that uses them without a user click prompting the popup, they are like the old style popups that were a cancer on the early web, only marginally better because they don't try to bomb your browser/system like they occasionally would do back then).
Though what I'd really like to see is a DOM designed to serve the user's will rather than the webdevs'.
Yes, this is exactly what I meant, smart blocking (especially since nowdays ads are "content"), and at some point in the future when services (eg banks) will force you to go through their ultra-processed & upsalesy AI chat for everything you could just send in your own AI to deal with their bs AI trying to monetise everything.
Oh, qewl, that is almost what I meant if they pivot that way.
(Something seems familiar with this, but can't even decide if I heard about it before or not. If it would integrate in the everyday browsing experience without too much extra external data, this could eventually be the help I spoke about.)
Even HomeAssistant, which is literally meant to be the open source alternative to all the big tech megacorp enshittification, is now vibe coding their server core and most major plugins, as I found out recently.
They're also censoring discussion about it on their forums, when I tried bringing it up- everything hidden as 'off topic.'
I can't contain my excitement for the new modern AI browser, Microzilla Firepilot (stolen from phoronix). Best of all, every AI functionality is opt-out, so you don't have to waste time turning them all on.
Google's browser will be left in the dust!!!
Now that is innovation. Good job, new Firefox CEO.
I swapped for librewolf and enjoy all my shit still there. With ungoogled chromium for those sites that has some insane reason for the site breaking down when you look at it with anything but a missionary get. Trying helium too but yeah my Firefox is customized out the wazoo
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Frankly, people are assuming a lot from just the words "AI browser", which could mean a browser that is all AI, sure, but could equally be a browser that, say, just uses AI to generate missing alt-text.
I think there's a lot of people who just object to the concept of AI generally - a valid stance - who then assume that anything that uses it must be trying to take away their options to not use it. Which is a valid complaint if that actually happens, but I see no real evidence that is happening here.
In fact, those who actually read the blog post they're panicking over would see that right before saying that in the blog post, he explicitly says:
AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off.
free bottom surgery :3
Well, I still haven't seen any AI in my Firefox and I'm planing on using it until I will.
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
I genuinely thought you said "hold your dick for at least one second"
Time to pull out a hammer
STOP! HAMMER TIME!
Can’t touch this.
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
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, you can also opt out of your planet being demolished to build the intergalactic highway, the form is in the basement.
Incidentally, most of the new llm bullshits are on by default and can't be turn off in the settings, you need to go to about:config and search for .ml to do so (not to be confused with .ml instance of lemmy which you also can't easily opt out of). Obviously this settings aren't synchronised between instances by "synchronise all settings" thingy which they need my personal info for, why would it, so you need to do it every time. Also also they sometimes revert back with major updates, because obviously they are.
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.
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.
That's a good question. I'd personally argue that it's different in that the adblockers are not an inbuilt part of Firefox, they're made by extension developers. This is built right into the browser.
It's more of a concern with google summaries that show up at the top of search results because it completely removes the need to click on any of the websites it pulls from. Ideally a link summary just lets you figure out which link you need without clicking on and looking at each one.
Thanks for adding that detail, makes sense. I was thinking the link previews were yeah more like the google results. Hover over and not have to go to the site.
No, it's on by default, it has access to everything you're browsing and doing fuck knows what with it, and you need to know that it is doing it and unless you've read it somewhere you don't know that it's there.
That's so not true it's not even funny.
I mean yeah, it could be worse, everything could be worse. Still, not good, not good at all.
Leaving my pointer on a random place that happens to be a link is atypical? I don't think it is. I had this pop up to me a couple of days ago and I didn't even understand what could've triggered it, I was wondering if I clicked something or pressed a key unconsciously.
Pretty decent? Just passable, if the text is about some run-of-the-mill topic.
Doesn't do that for me. I have to hold left click on a link for over a second to trigger it.
And yeah, pretty decent. It can produce a basically summary of a fair amount of text pretty quickly and generally accurately. It's not an expert wordsmith, it won't give a deep and thoughtful analysis of the poem you pointed it at or anything, but that's not the use case. The use case is "give me the key bullet points of this article so I can decide if I should give it more attention.", and it does that job pretty well.
This is absolutely, demonstrably, documentedly not true. It is accurate sometimes, and sometimes it shows you absolute bullshit. When will it be accurate? Who knows. So you can use it only when you don't care about the truth, in which case why even bother, just imagine the article said what you wanted it to say and be done with it
Depends on model tuning. Basically, you can tune a model to hallucinate less, or to write more human-like, but not really both at the same time, at least not for a model you could expect most users to run locally. For this sort of application (summarizing text), you'd tune heavily against hallucination, because ideally your bullet points are going to mostly be made up of direct paraphrase of article text, with a very limited need for fluid writing or anything even vaguely creative.
You can tune it to hallucinate more, you can't tune it to not hallucinate at all, and that's what matters. You need it to be "not at all" if you want it to be useful, otherwise you can never be sure that it's not lying, and you can't check for lies other than reading the article, which defies the whole purpose of it.
I misunderstood the previous comments, actually, yeah, it's not triggered the way I assumed.
I'll put aside all the other complaints I have on my mind, because we've both probably gone through similar discussions, I don't want to get bogged down in yet another, and just say that I honestly can't imagine this being such a useful or time-saving thing in the first place. Like, did it use to be a frequent problem to you to start reading an article, realise you're not interested, and give up on it?
Holding my click on a volume slider triggered the feature so it quickly became really annoying
*yet
The new CEO is an AI True Believer, and I don't doubt this will last.
They'll remove the options to turn it off, and make it full of the AI features, with no opt-out or opt-in
Solution:
about:config > browser.ml.enable = falseIt 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
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.You only need to set
browser.ml.enabletofalse.Why use 1 hammer with 50 hammers will do the job even better!
Because these flags might be edited, or more might be added. Keep it simple.
Fair enough.
The article does say that we should always be able to turn off the AI part.
Arch Linux package maintainers seem to have disabled it by default unless I did something and forgot
Save us
LadybirdServo, you're our only hope.Too bad it's made by someone who promotes 'great replacement' theory and stands with fascists.
Since the comment you were responding to was edited to strike out "Ladybird" and write "Servo" instead, would you mind editing your comment to clarify you are talking about Ladybird and not Servo?
So what alternative do you suggest?
Zen Browser, open source Firefox fork
Just got it on play store, there's an ad everytime I open it?
Zen Browser is not even on Android. The one in the Play Store is not what they're talking about.
Thanks for clarifying. As much as I love open source, I'll still want something that can offer a similar experience on both desktop and mobile. For anyone else like me, I'd suggest Waterfox.
I suggest IronFox for Android.
Holy hell. I knew about the gender neutral pronouns debacle. Didn't know there are more..
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)?
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
On Ladybird, you can block yourself from supporting the devs
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.
You're not dumb, I made a bad joke. I could explain the joke over a few paragraphs, but it still won't be funny. In fact, you'd hate it more for having to read that context. Suffice to say, my ADHD internal dialog jumped from idea to idea until I vomited out something that made me chuckle in the moment.
Sorry, your confusion was collateral damage from my mental explosion.
lol no you’re good
Go grab some adhd meds, my treat
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.
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.
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.
[email protected] is a good resource
Are we supposed to only use products and services from people whom we agree with completely on their full set of personal beliefs?
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
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.
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.
Just a bit of fascism, as a treat?
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.
When it concerns fascism? How the fuck do you even dare to ask that question?
Yes. I can and I will. You cannot stop me, I am mad with power.
What about Servo?
Any good browsers that use it available yet?
still mozilla
edit: I get it, stop replying
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
You can't tell me what to do :3
Just disable the feature or use one of the great Firefox forks like Librewolf or Waterfox. Maybe even Iceweasel.
The world has really gone to shit if the cryptobrowser is our only hope
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.
Given python is air what are water, ice, blood, fire, lightning, combustion, earth, metal, and energy?
Ok, let's do this:
Air = Python Water = Javascript Ice = Typescript Fire = Java Lightning = Groovy Combustion = Kotlin Earth = C++ Metal = Rust Spirit = Assembly
I just got Waterfox this morning. Pretty dope
there is a mobile waterfox too now
Does it have ublock?
It has browser extensions, and you can install uBlock through that, so yes
It's the only browser I have on my phone, it works beautifully.
Waterfox is Firefox.
I'm holding out for EarthFox
Its a fork and they can choose to include the changes they want from upstream. They've come out and said they're not adding this AI bullshit. Librewolf has done the same.
So yes, base is firefox, but it's not actually Firefox, in the same way edge uses chrome as its base (not exactly, but similar)
It is much different than this. Edge is built on the Chromium engine, but that's it. Waterfox is Firefox, as it's shipped by Mozilla, only with some theme changes and flags disabled.
Oh, I had thought they had some control of upstream merges if its a fork. Couldn't they choose not to include the upstream AI nonsense merges?
The code for AI is still included, it's simply disabled.
It's a fork of Firefox.
It is a set of patches on top of Firefox.
They’re not perfect, but having a real alternative engine matters more than people realize.
OK, what happened?
https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozillas-new-ceo-its-time-to-evolve-firefox-into-an-ai-browser
I really hope Firefox gets forked, and ends up like OpenOffice
zipzap your wish is granted:
https://librewolf.net/
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.)
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.
It certainly is.
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?
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, ...
This repository contains all the patches and theming that make up LibreWolf, as well as scripts and a Makefile to build LibreWolf. There also is the Settings repository, which contains the LibreWolf preferences.
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.
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.
LibreWolf has been really solid for me
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?
Firefox has many excellent forks already.
waterfox has been pretty good for me
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.
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.
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.
Waterfox is my favorite for sure, very lightweight too.
Discord doesn't like it when it comes to voice-chat in the Android app, sadly (even though I know we should all leave Discord, but Revolt and Matrix can barely hold candles to the flame of its incredibly sophisticated streaming system), but yes, I've been on Waterfox for some time now.
For future readers, yes, Floorp is a real browser
Honestly the way they (by default) change home tab background for each visit is absolutely adorable.
All my 'puters have Water, Wolf, and Floo.
I don't think I will ever be able to pass past this name. It's a name of something that sci-fi comedic cartoon will create for a passing joke.
Feels like 'plumbus'
I actually use floorp. It's literally the most customizable Firefox fork. It's the only Firefox fork that allows me to have my tab bar exactly correct the way I want it.
But yeah name's stupid. I kind of love it though. It's so non-serious
It's also a good verb. "I'll floorp it later". "Send me the link, I'll floorp it to myself".
Does it support profiles? If so, I'll give it a floorp, just to see how it floorps.
I'm still not convinced that name isn't an elaborate joke. Like I could download the browser and be typing this comment on it and still think "man, they went all-in on this prank"
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
you'll have about the same experience with zen+ublock, all told. obviously there's more advanced privacy features you'll lose, but your advertising experience will be about the same, nearly if not identical
I hope enough people remain on this AI infested ghost ship that it can keep providing a base for librewolf.
tbf, firefox left the room years ago.
LibreWolf looks good these days.
https://chaos.social/@librewolf/115716906957137196
Can it sync my password and history from Mozilla’s servers? I’d switch in a heartbeat.
Yep. Is basically a firefox stripped from junk. Just remember is very stick on privacy, if something is not visible or some pics don't upload, you just have to enable the site permission from the icon in the navigation bar.
That’s excellent! I’ll have to investigate how to make work with profiles-sync-daemon on my system. Then it’s a definite conclusion! Thank you.
"Firefox is evolving into an agentic browser, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere. Join us at #MozillaIgnite to see how frontier firms are transforming with Firefox and what’s next for the platform. We can’t wait to show you!"
Do you think this is a cry for help?
Ugh, even the corporate false chipper voice.
I know I'm gonna get a lot of flack for suggesting this, but Vivaldi feels like what Firefox should have been. More customizability, less AI and sponsored crap. They are the only major browser offering an option for a small, reasonably sized tab bar rather than the tab bars with 3 layers of padding and more whitespace than text.
Additionally, Vivaldi doesn't pester you with twice-a-day update pop-ups or worse, the dreaded "Restart to keep using Firefox," it just gets out of your way like a good browser should.
Vivaldi is not open-source, so it shouldn't even be considered as an option. Try [email protected]!
Yup go Waterfox. Truely open and a fork of Firefox. It's the best we have unfortunately.
How does it stack up against librewolf?
But it isn’t truly open though is it? I thought it was owned by a company.
Is it chromium? If yes than pass. Did everyone forgot when Google tried to use chromium to take control with this bullshit?
I tried it before, it was buggy and my tabs locked up. Also since its based on chrome, its very nerfed when it comes to powerful plugins. I didnt like it. My first impression was positive but no, it feels very bloated.
But if you like it and you feel its better than Firefox for you, thats a good thing.
Netscape 3 with integrated mail and news is still the best internet experience that's ever been conceived or designed or implemented. Communicator screwed it all up less than a year later but it was the best while it lasted.
Just because you force yourself to use Gmail, it doesn't mean that Thunderbird is shit for others.
Waterfox
i use vivaldi as well. seriously!
Vivaldi is by far the best browser out there. Its customizability and tab handling is second to none. Anyone not giving it a spin are missing out. Yes, their UI is proprietary, but out of all the things to be concerned about, this aint it. They are based in Norway and made by software engineers who worked on Opera browser who out of principle just wants a good browser which is not in corporate hell.
Seriously give it a try.
If i cant use uBlock origin on a browser, it cant be my primaryb browser.
Maybe among the wheelchair bound browsers that don't let you properly block ads.
I stopped using Opera more 15 years ago, shortly before they dropped their own engine.
I did like their customisation options, 20+ years ago they were the only browser supporting mouse gestures too.
But I see no reason why would I want to use what's basically chromium, especially bcs of ad blocking.
Y'all just live with ads? (I don't think sinkholes catch everything.)
Additionally I do not want to support proprietary code if I don't have to.
The image is nearly 10 months old!
Anyone that is not using Libre Wolf or equivalent should be to take advantage of the wonderful privacy suite.
Librewolf is great. Pretty much the same as Firefox without the shit.
Yeah but its a soft fork, inherently dependent on mozilla.
Mozilla is circling the drain, determined to drive away the last of its users.
Who cares if it’s a soft fork as long as it’s open source? The point is to keep the fork clean and if Mozilla fails, the community can just take it over.
Not really.
Mozilla spends many millions a year on devs for their browser.
If they stop doing that, LibreWolf won't have any patches or updates.
The community is t going to take over from mozilla.
I’m not saying it would be easy, but that’s the whole point behind open source. We’d have to at least try.
"the community taking over" is not the whole point behind open source.
There's plenty of open source projects that need 100s of developers with niche credentials and experience to maintain.
If mozilla dies, and that's the current trajectory, then ladybug or similar will be our refuge.
Yes, “the community taking over” is the entire ideology behind open source. Thats what it means. Anyone can develop it. It doesn’t mean that it needs to happen, just that part of the freedom you have is to do so. You’re conflating the two.
Dunno how pale moon is doing nowadays, but forks either follow the bigger principles of the base project or wither into obscureness if the base project changes underlying technologies.
Librewolf is just a set of patches on top of Firefox.
There are no developers.
I know what it is, I was just saying that the community would take over Firefox if need be.
How do you think the "community" would undertake such effort?
I don’t “understand” what you’re asking. When software is open/libre, anyone can take over a project.
You?
What's the migration process like?
Pretty much transparent.
That's why I use Internet Explorer 7
What's wrong with IE11?
Gallagher and his sledge-o-matic have entered the chat
I'm still angry that an (optionally) AI browser isn't the worst idea as a headline/dev direction ... if you don't read any further than the headline that is.
I do want or eventually will need some local, foss AI to deal with all the megacorp bs AI that will be just everywhere on the internets (I can't humanly fight the increasing megacorp slop, I need/will need my own AI to help me fight and navigate it, as a freedom necessity).
Someone pls work on that, I don't want to live in an internetless cave/woods for the rest of my life (the cave/woods is what I wish for regardless, it's just a question of my need for internet access).
But no, they decided to hammer their dicks with all the megamatacorp AIs. I mean, it's prob marginally better than to forward ppl to sites or Chrome, but it's not a thing that you would want publicized as a major step/direction, it's at the very least distasteful.
Pretty sure the translate feature is using local ai, which I think is great! Its not as accurate as others, but a lot more trustworthy at least
Also AI could theoretically do an even better job at ad blocking and also block other annoying shit like autoplay videos and html5 popups (fuck any web dev that uses them without a user click prompting the popup, they are like the old style popups that were a cancer on the early web, only marginally better because they don't try to bomb your browser/system like they occasionally would do back then).
Though what I'd really like to see is a DOM designed to serve the user's will rather than the webdevs'.
Yes, this is exactly what I meant, smart blocking (especially since nowdays ads are "content"), and at some point in the future when services (eg banks) will force you to go through their ultra-processed & upsalesy AI chat for everything you could just send in your own AI to deal with their bs AI trying to monetise everything.
You will never guess who already did that.
https://github.com/mozilla-ai/llamafile
Oh, qewl, that is almost what I meant if they pivot that way.
(Something seems familiar with this, but can't even decide if I heard about it before or not. If it would integrate in the everyday browsing experience without too much extra external data, this could eventually be the help I spoke about.)
It's a fucking infection is what it is.
Even HomeAssistant, which is literally meant to be the open source alternative to all the big tech megacorp enshittification, is now vibe coding their server core and most major plugins, as I found out recently.
They're also censoring discussion about it on their forums, when I tried bringing it up- everything hidden as 'off topic.'
A complete betrayal of their users, imo.
The only reason I use Firefox is because it has my chaterbate password saved on it and I can't remember it.
you can see all passwords saved in firefox.
😐 well son of a bitch!
I can't contain my excitement for the new modern AI browser, Microzilla Firepilot (stolen from phoronix). Best of all, every AI functionality is opt-out, so you don't have to waste time turning them all on.
Google's browser will be left in the dust!!!
Now that is innovation. Good job, new Firefox CEO.
I swapped for librewolf and enjoy all my shit still there. With ungoogled chromium for those sites that has some insane reason for the site breaking down when you look at it with anything but a missionary get. Trying helium too but yeah my Firefox is customized out the wazoo
They just can't help themselves, eh?
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
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?
only matter of time, before its not opt-in, its always a testing the waters.
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
Fair correction
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.
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 stop being optional pretty damned quick.
Their new CEO is wanting far far more than some opt-in options, did you buy see the announcement that it's becoming an AI browser.
That doesn't mean optional. That means they want it to be the whole point
Frankly, people are assuming a lot from just the words "AI browser", which could mean a browser that is all AI, sure, but could equally be a browser that, say, just uses AI to generate missing alt-text.
I think there's a lot of people who just object to the concept of AI generally - a valid stance - who then assume that anything that uses it must be trying to take away their options to not use it. Which is a valid complaint if that actually happens, but I see no real evidence that is happening here.
In fact, those who actually read the blog post they're panicking over would see that right before saying that in the blog post, he explicitly says:
Sounds pretty optional to me
Again, for now, seems like the CEO is gung-ho to go all-in on this shit
What makes it "seem" that is the case?
Their words and actions
I understood the post to be in response to the new CEO's message about "becoming a modern AI browser".
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.