“Changes course after backlash” != “clarifies”.
I dunno that seems very compatible with the following that was said in the CEO statement.
AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off.
Also here is a link to the posts https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740500373677782
Also, the dev says the following and I think they have a point.
I’m not asking for faith in our direction - the thing I love about the Firefox community is how open, honest, and technical it is.
But I do ask that you don’t have the opposite of faith. Like, try not to be determined that we’re going to do the wrong thing here.
try not to be determined that we’re going to do the wrong thing here.
There’s a lot Mozilla has done right, but there’s a lot they haven’t done right as well. These days, the cynical view has proven itself to be more reliable in general, so it’s hard not to apply it here as well.
That being said, FF has supported AI chatbots for a while and I haven’t seen it come up once in my browser beyond when they said “this is a thing now”. But this has also been a good opportunity to explore alternatives, so I’m trying out Zen now (ff-based still).
“Can easily turn off” implies that it ships to you on.
Honestly, asking us to assume that every action comes from a place of good will just makes me doubt them even more. You earn that kind of trust, you don’t ask for it; and if they don’t have it they should be asking hard questions about why.
They are a company that used to be about independent choice but are effectively reliant on Google (a privacy nightmare) to be solvent, and they’re now putting their bets into being “a modern AI browser”. Nothing about that tells me I should just trust them.
Something easily turned off is distinctly not opt in. They’re still lying to everyone.
Earlier today I found a fucking AI feature automatically turned on… Those idiots need to get their shit straight and fast if they want to remain relevant.
Maybe but I although critical of some recent firefox actions think its possible given the og statement it is a clarification from a somewhat vague statement that was taken in the worst possible way by some and posted again and again often by people not even reading beyond the headline.
Changes courseswerves erratically before continuing in the same general direction.They already said as much two or three months ago, but sure, believe that everybody is out to get you via forced AI.
Is the killswitch in settings? Because I had to set browser.ml.enable to false in about:config since there was nothing related to it in settings
Yeah, that’d be like the web browser equivalent of going into the Windows registry editor and changing a value in there. Like, it’s there, but unless you already know what you’re looking for, it’s not really an option.
Is anything related to AI even in yet? Or is it that they just placed the flag in there for future use, but no features are in?
Not sure if it counts but chatbot support in the sidebar has existed for quite some time now.
The tab grouping has an ai thing that suggests groups for you I think
and the right click summarize is in.
Yeah. I’m still pissed off dev hours get wasted on this shit instead of, idk, HDR support? Surround sound audio?
They say a switch will be built in. There is no switch yet. Which means the deluge of little popups about AI tab grouping and the “look at Perplexity” messages are not going away until these changes are actually released.
“You won this round. But we’ll try again tomorrow!”
They already said as much two or three months ago…
Thank god we have a photo of the firefox logo instead of an article
This is good enough for me. This means the Firefox code base will not get so integrated with AI features that forkers cannot remove them, and that was my primary concern.
Get a new CEO and get back to us
Yawn. People have been saying “Screw MozIlla, I’m switching browsers now!”
Nothing new. Just disable the feature like you do with telemetry lol.
I disabled telemetry by switching browsers tho
You cannot do that in chrome.
I started using a firefox fork lol
switching browsers
Firefox fork
So still the same browser, just a different flavor. Chrome and Firefox are different browsers. IronFox and LibreWolf are still Firefox.
I’m interested in Ladybird so we can have an independent browser with no ties to Google.
Yeah, the same browser engine. That’d be like saying all linux is the same because they all use the kernel. I do look forward to ladybird though
Then good
Which fork?
The best killswitch is called Librewolf. Another good one is Waferfox.
Anyone know why LibreWolf isn’t in the default Debian repositories? I trust Debian - I’m not going to add a repository to get LibreWolf.
Until it’s available from a default Debian repo, I’ll keep going thru my list of all the garbage I have to go switch off in Settings and about:config every time I install Firefox for someone.
I switched to Waterfox immediately after they released the first news. Having to disable the AI stuff in about:config was already annoying enough, so I have no trust in whatever they claim anymore.
Opt-in you say? How about RMB click with AI chatbot that you can disable by clicking “Disable AI bot” there? Wasn’t opt-in first. And, how is that in aboug:config .ml. list contains tons of entries set to True, rather than False? How in the fuck is it opt-in? It has been opt-out and in order to opt-out most of it, you would need an intermediate/advanced user. There was no toggle switch on a sidebar for normies to see and click. I call BS on this statement.
Link to the article as it doesn’t show up on Lemmy: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/12/firefox-dev-clarifies-there-will-be-an-ai-kill-switch/
They really should have come out with a local llm poduct seperate from firefox that is compatible with using it out of box.
good.
Too late, I switched
