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Oops whoops already migrated

what privacy promises have been dropped? afaik, besides the buttons that just opens up a chatbot website of your choosing in the sidebar, everything runs locally and fully privately. there's no cloud involved. firefox is currently the only solution for fully private translation in the browser.

You mean I don't have to hunt through about:config to turn them off? It will just be there in the options? I'll believe it when I see it, because it's not there now.

you're literally describing this extension lol. it blocks the slop in real time so you don't have to deal with it. definitely helps keep the feed sane: chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ai-bl...

I have been a long-time Firefox user, and I have been recommending Firefox to all my friends for years. But now I guess I’ll have to wait and see what the result is from all of this. I am staying on for now; please don’t disappoint your long-term users.

I just had to disable an "AI feature" you automatically turned on in my browser. Looks like you lost me fully now

Why even do it then if it’s opt-in and most people probably will never enable it? Why waste dev time on this? What even are you adding? The nebulous statement of just being an “ai browser” is meaningless.

Could it have that name? It'll be cathartic for everyone who's sick of every company trying to shove this shit down our throats like we're foie gras geese. Hell, you could have it be the "Initiate Butlerian Jihad" button! Dune is cool! Have fun with it!

i never use the password manager feature in firefox, but i have never felt the need to demand it be removed and fully opt-in... i can just not use it if i don't find it useful or i don't trust it

if you can disable it, then why are you bothering to integrate these features in the first place? what's with the "AI-first browser" bullshit? nobody wants this lol. you aren't even a publicly traded company!

Is this already available or is it in the works?

What happen when some big brass upstair decide one day to kill the AI kill Switch and put all ON by default. The thing is, we never asked for any of those things, and they will be there, used or not... The risk stays that one day we won't have the choice anymore.

This should have been in there when AI features were rolled out. Why is it still not here? Why promise to add a kill switch later, why not just do it?

AI is the purest, most distilled antithesis of every single one of those desires.

please just listen to your community and exclude AI entirely. please be the change in a world that refuses to. you can still do the right thing.

you can't recover from a betrayal like this. you're cooked.

Why are you wasting precious human resources on adding AI nobody wants? Give us an option to block slop sites - that's the only "ai feature" we want.

Or you could just not. You already had a perfectly good product.

Problem is, you've ALREADY shipped AI features, pre-kill switch. Therefore, I've already switched browsers. It's currently easier to install a new browser than to dig through about:config for all the ML options, so that's what a lot of your users are doing.

An AI kill switch for the AI things you've already put in would be great. Except: if you're dedicated to being opt-in from now on, it should be an AI _enable_ switch. It should start off.

Not very opt-in when I see them by default.

(For real, thank you for posting this thread, @webdevs.firefox.com. This is good info to have. And I know you know, but please do know that millions of us fucking hate "A.i." and all the misinfo and fascism it pushes and really do not want it anywhere in our most used apps, even as an opt-in.)

Just don't add the AI "features"?? No one wants this.

I would personally interpret the near-unanimous negative reaction and the mass migration of users to other browsers as a sign that AI isn't worth investing the time, money, or effort to implement at all, "kill switch" or no. It should be crystal clear that this is simply unwanted in all forms.

needs to be opt-in as defined by vernacular (ie, 'off by default' and nothing less) or just don't fucking do it

Yea, is it not _browser.ml.enable_ ?

How about you fork a Fireslops repo for those who want it instead

I think one important step is that Firefox stops shipping with AI enabled by default. It was enabled in my machine in a new installation without my consent and this is not admissible. being opt-in means disabled by default which isn't the current state of things.

By forcing AI in, you have already lost trust in any of your backpedal messaging being regarded as true.

Sure, Jan. bsky.app/profile/davi...

Get rid of AI entirely. It produces garbage results, it's unethical to use, and it's killing the planet.

Google 'trust thermocline', do some reading, then show it to your boss and ask them if they're really sure about this

The best solution would be to not touch the hallucination plagiarism machines, the next best solution would be to have a package that doesn't even include them in the download.

At the very least making it "ai.kill" in the about:config could be cool 🫡

Heck, put it in the browser's name: Firefox anti-ai version

It had absolutely 100% be an easy-to-find option and not buried within five or six dubmenus.

Go fuck yourselves, your AI, and your kill switch.

Firefox went from being better than anything else to a solid fourth place for the last decade. I don't care if it's opt-in, I'm out! Convince your dumbass bosses to stop jacking themselves raw over the transmorphative interacticulation possibilities of dumbest malware of all time or fuck off.

We don’t want them there in the first place

Just don’t add the damn AI in the first place. No one wants this

The announcement is a disappointment; whether or not there's something in about:config to toggle off, it speaks to the desperation of the organization, its disregard for those who have used—even championed—Firefox for years as a sober, open alternative to other faddish, rapacious browsers.

Why make a kill switch at all? Why not make the AI features first-party extensions that can be installed separately?

„Is a new toolbar button opt-in?“ I don’t know, was it already there when I upgraded and I had to turn it off? If the answer is „yes“ then it’s not opt-in. Not sure what the confusion is here.

ive already used the "kill switch" by deleting firefox

Was it the people with money (or at least people higher up the chain than the actual coders) who pushed the ai stuff

firefox constantly resets browser.ml.* in about:config. i repeatedly have to opt out of features every couple of updates. AI features are already in firefox and they are opt-out, not opt-in

Are you sending out the product with any of these "AI" features on by default?

Why are AI features not opt-in today? If today they're enabled by default without prompting the user, you already missed the opportunity to let the user decide. For real transparency Firefox should show a recap of all features previously enabled automatically without the user consent.

Y'know what else is unambiguous? How harmful LLMs and GenAI are. Damn it Firefox, we trusted you.

You already had my faith. For decades. But you've already done the wrong thing here, and that reveals Firefox has already lost it's way.

It is also a spyware that steals our information and destroys our privacy, both things mozilla was supposed to protect. Can't stress enough how "it does not have AI" has been THE sales pitch for Firefox lately, it's what made people change from chrome to it and you all ruined it. And we WILL leave.

there is no sufficient kill switch but to have never embarked on this path in the first place. the vast vast vast vast vast vast vast majority of people do. not. want. this. shit. the writing has been on the wall for ages and it was ignored. you want to do the right thing? walk it back entirely.

should not** float

if i turn the sloption off, i am never going to want to see it anywhere, and as far as i can tell that feature (the longpress link for summary) got pushed after all the initial blowback. which is why people have antifaith, and I think thats fair

Not sure if it is still completely up to date, but I followed flamedfury.com/posts/disabl... and haven't seen anything about AI summaries. It really shouldn't need to be this complicated.

Of course. I mean, it's not like you have a history of doing the wrong thing by sneaking in "AI" junk enabled by default with not only no kill switch but that I have to rummage in about:config to turn off. Or is it?

This isn't rocket science, and it isn't complicated, we don't want this shit, you knew that ahead of time, you did it anyways. No need for a huge thread, do better.

We're not making assumptions you dipshits, you've straight up announced you're going to do the wrong thing. Embracing this plagiarism fueled digital snake oil is a bad decision, no matter how many options you include to turn it off

While deployment of the kill switch may keep me from ditching firefox immediately (the moment I saw the announcement I started looking for an anti-AI browser), it's going to take credible commitments from firefox to not do AI to keep me with firefox for the longer term.

Bruh I've already uninstalled your software across all my devices. You tanked your goodwill immediately. All I have left for you is apathy.

As an organization, drop all plans for anything GenAI-related, promise to never touch it again, and have your wayward CEO apologize sincerely and unequivocally (and, optionally, resign). That is the only way to regain this trust.

there's one way that you can regain our trust, which is to tear this garbage out and publicly commit to never doing it again.

I'll trust you if you chuck the AI garbage out for 3-5 years until the hype dies down. Then, you can sift through the ashes and salvage whatever was actually useful in this tech.

Thanks Jake! I trust you as a person and your intentions a lot, so I hope you have enough power to steer that ship in the right directions! For me Firefox feels like a two-sided coin rn: glad Theo are here, glad they have an engine to not make Google and Apple the duopoly

You are the first Firefox person that talks in the same language with its user base. I bet the blowback would not have been this extreme had it been someone like you and not your CEO who was in charge of that public statement.

Why.Add.It.In.The.First.Place? Also, why the fuck did your fucking CEO talk about it like he did? I know that you developers are not responsible for corpo shit, but the trust is ZERO right now, and your company needs to know that.

You can't with just this. Fire the CEO and roll back the AI browser bullshit, then work on actively making useful features for three or four years and ask again.

so far I can tell the dev team, that I will not return to Firefox proper. The ML was already implemented into FF without the Users knowledge and it was quite painful to disable. I did after 19 years switch over to Waterfox and don't think the new CEO can be trusted.

I don't think you or the rest of the Firefox team understand how you've blown it with your user base by giving into them "AI" FOMO and sneaking in ML settings that were auto-enabled. Take it all out!

Just be glad this thread wasn't a long-ass video. It almost was.

If you want people to trust you you need to not enshittify your product. Customization to make the enshittification less severe doesn’t cut it. Build a browser that serves its users and not any profit motive, and if you can’t do it at Mozilla, do it elsewhere. Your talent is wasted there.

you lost all our trust by embracing fascism. whether or not YOU think you're not doing anything wrong, your USER BASE DOES. you are only destroying the legacy of your product, fuck you.

FWIW, I’m switching my desktop usage to Waterfox until I see some forward-looking demonstration of consistency in this approach. I don’t doubt that those working the technical side understand peoples’ frustrations but I’m tired of having to swap services because management found a new shiny toy.

The fact that Mozilla, represented always as 'for the web', is okay with even building in the most anti-web technology ever, built around scraping all our data without us getting asked (no opt in for that). Nah. Having ai even as an option is where y'all lost all the trust you built.

Too late, just moved to Waterfox. www.waterfox.com

I've already been getting ai options and other terrible features in my browser that I didn't opt into and have had to manually turn off in the about config. I don't believe you that these will be opt in

how about you just don't put the fucking AI in anywhere ever? you ever think about that? or think at all?

Ty!

It's not about deactivating AI or not, it's about not wanting to condone anything AI related, so yea bye 👋

You already lost us bro. Look back on your failures and do better next time I guess, if you can recapture that market share

Duck Duck Go has an AI off switch.

The kill switch is called "uninstall Firefox" btw

why didn't they do this from the start instead of making you manually toggle 13 different options in about:config

This is something that I like the sound of. It would be nice if there was some way to standardise the kill switch. So websites (squints at Google) didn't automatically respond with AI derived content.

Ok good

Put the "AI" behind compile flags, and give us a download with all AI/AI integration, and the capacity for AI/AI integration, removed completely. That would be the bare minimum to take you seriously here.