I should also note, the opposite of faith is skepticism, and it's the place we should be when people make unverifiable claims. If you mean faith as synonymous with confidence, that comes from trust and demonstrated good will. The good will dried up the moment unwanted ML and LLM garbage was jammed in and set as opt-out rather than opt-in.

All of this should be opt-in from jump. Barring that, there should be clear and concise instructions for opting out, not messing around in hidden setting panels.

With respect you can't counter what those of us who have lost faith see again and again from Mozilla. It's a long history, not just recent and has become progressively worse over years. AI is an expected, but for many particularly abhorrent footshot in a steady stream.

I gave up on Firefox for other reasons (performance) a few years ago now, and use it only to recover old passwords. I would never use it seriously again because it's not worthy of my trust.
@phl

@phl
It's about device (eg budget phone) use patterns (eg many open tabs) rather than sites, but FF on Android was indeed unusable on IMDB.com.

It was also terrible for me on a high powered 64GB Linux laptop because of many open tabs.

Brave has been fine for a few years now on same devices and with same use patterns - regardless of websites. I guess Chrome might be too but who still uses that 🤣

Yeh, I know many do. 🤦‍♂️
@firefoxwebdevs

@happyborg
Ahh interesting, yeah, I count Firefox Android a very different entity from Firefox the desktop browser, so much so it didn't even occur as an option in this discussion :D And you're right, *that* one has had some wild issues (from performance to web function to UX), to the extent that it's only been my secondary browser until very recently.

Can't, thankfully, say I've ever had anything nearly as grating with the true OG Firefox on desktop.

@firefoxwebdevs

@happyborg I have like 4 windows, each with over 20 tabs in my current work firefox (tree style tab continues to be a life saver) and have not had any performance issues with that much nonsense open yet

Similarly, at home (though usually only one window), I might end up preloading a dozen youtube or whatever tabs to check out later.

@firefoxwebdevs

I have five virtual desktops and each might have 20 browser windows open with 1 to 10+ tabs in each. Not to mention multiple instances of other memory heavy apps such as VSCode & terminals running mega Rust builds etc

It's a powerful laptop but Brave handles this while Firefox does not.

I don't understand why your experience has any relevance to mine, but people do insist on responding with, it works fine for me. I'm happy for you but it isn't helpful.

Same re Android
@firefoxwebdevs

@happyborg Crikey that's a lot of windows :D

And nothing more than just being curious what it takes to have a bad experience in Firefox because I thought I had too much stuff open.

It's not only about trust. It's also the question how Firefox wants to be part of destroying our climate and water ressources in a time of #climateEmergency and growing #desertification thanks to #datacenters needed by the #AIHype!

Software that contributes to this destruction, even though it would work without it, is not an option for me. If it forces me to use such functions, I consider it even criminal. Firefox/the CEO wants AI.

#climateAction

@jaffathecake

@jaffathecake it’s hard to believe the “kill switch” will actually do what it says. We’ve been told time and time again “AI” will be “opt-in” just to have the features repeatedly turned back on after users have disabled them.

Why is this *any* different?

@jaffathecake

If you want to make an AI browser, make a separate browser with AI. Then you can compare how many users are on that browser vs. how many are on the browser without AI.

I like Gecko. I don't like generative AI. I am still using Thunderbird because there's no AI or plans to integrate AI.

I have stopped using Firefox and purged it from most of my machines because it is diving into AI.

I have stopped using search engines because they have integrated AI.

I am concerned about the societal and ecological impacts of AI.

I would love to see Mozilla stop shooting itself in the foot. Instead, I see you all reaching for another box of bullets and reloading the gun.

#NoAI

@jaffathecake

Why would anyone trust Mozilla with a damned thing ever again when it's clearly been hijacked by people with an agenda to enshittify it into oblivion?

@jaffathecake I'm sorry you were put in this position.

Many people are extremely angry about resource-guzzling, plagiarising, bullshitting chatbots being forced into every aspect of our lives. We are personally insulted on a daily basis by being told they can do our jobs. We watch as innocent friends and family are conned into believing whatever slop they generate. We seethe with rage as our governments are co-opted to pour money into this awful technology instead of stopping it. We fear for our children growing up in this world. We are literally told it will become our god.

Into this context, you're pushed out as a helpless lightning rod. Clearly you have no power to change Mozilla's strategy, and clearly your bosses aren't going to front up and fix things.

You didn't do this. In an ideal world people wouldn't vent their anger at you personally. But the world we're forced to live in is very very far from ideal.

@a40yostudent
> common sense (auto hide cookie consent)

How is "Let's hide the fact websites screw you by hiding pre-enabled trackers when GDPR requires opt-in" is common sense? It defeats "privacy first"…

Common sense is refusing useless cookies autocratically and blocking trackers and extensions can do both…

Websites displaying big-ass banners for technical/useful cookies such as auth/session cookies is just dark pattern. Law requires tracker consent, NOT useless banners…

if money is spent on paying people to work on AI, by definition it’s money that’s not directed towards the Web platform. Mozilla doesn’t have infinite resources. Choosing to redirect them towards AI is a choice, and it’s the wrong one.

@a40yostudent

@mcc
The chat request is coming from inside the house!

@firefoxwebdevs @oblomov

@Norgg "Machine learning technologies like the Bergamot translation project offer real, tangible utility. Bergamot is transparent in what it does (translate text locally, period), auditable (you can inspect the model and its behavior), and has clear, limited scope, even if the internal neural network logic isn’t strictly deterministic. Large language models are something else entirely*. They are black boxes. You cannot audit them. You cannot truly understand what they do with your data. You cannot verify their behaviour.

*in the context of a browser, I trust constrained, single purpose models with somewhat verifiable outputs (seeing text go in, translated text go out, compare its consistency) more than I trust general purpose models with broad access to my browsing context"

1/