- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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“AI kill switch” already exists. It’s called “delete firefox”
And install chromium?
sure why not
firefox is absolutely the lesser evil here
Our product ships with a dick smashing hammer, but you can disable it if you want
Once every update the product might decide on a whim to smash it’s dick again.
We just want to make sure we’re smashing the right dicks.
Assuming you trust them that it actually does that, and assuming they don’t just push an update that turns it back on later silently
It’s open-source. You don’t have to trust them.
I do, because I can’t go read the code and understand it. So I have to trust someone, if not them
Always funny seeing people say that for open-source stuff.
I’m not reading all of that. I know already that they are putting stuff that I don’t want into Firefox. They’ve told me.
An opt-out switch is not enough.
Mozilla has a history of being unhappy and insisting on their trademark when distros disable unwelcome features.
I just got on Firefox because I thought it was better than chrome
Been using Zen for about a year and it’s very nice except when I accidentally hit the clear button and lost all my tabs I was probably never going to look at again anyways.
Lol they’ve clearly been getting some push back on the Ai thing, huh?
Consider https://www.waterfox.com/ as an alternative. Anyone who wants a fair and free internet is probably still fucked in the mid-term unless a new FOSS engine falls out of the sky or a bunch of Mozilla devs jump ship with a hard fork because Waterfox is still downstream of Mozilla, using their engine, and reliant on them maintaining code. But Waterfox is not a bad option at present in a sea of terrible options, and it’s what I’ve switched to.
https://www.waterfox.com/blog/no-ai-here-response-to-mozilla/
Waterfox exists because some users want a browser that simply works well at being a browser. The UI is mature - arguably, it has been a solved for problem for years. The customisation features are available and apparent. The focus is on performance and web standards.
In many ways, browsers are operating systems of their own, and a browser’s job is to be a good steward of that environment. AI, in its current form and in my opinion does not match that responsibility.
And yes, yes - disabling features is all well and good, but at the end of the day, if these AI features are black boxes, how are we to keep track of what they actually do? The core browsing experience should be one that fully puts the user in control, not one where you’re constantly monitoring an inscrutable system that claims to be helping you.
Waterfox will not include LLMs. Full stop. At least and most definitely not in their current form or for the foreseeable future.
Would be interesting if this is how Waterfox really differentiates itself. From what I understand there’s been no real reason to use it over something like Librewolf or Arkenfox. Fond memories of using it for 64bit support in the early 2010s though
There was some initial confusion about Librewolf’s stance on AI, at the same time Mozilla Foundation CEO was putting his revolver into one of his orifices, that has since been cleared up: https://chaos.social/@librewolf/115716906957137196
With their clarification on why AI slop was enabled in Librewolf, I’d only caution anyone against Librewolf because they are a hardcore privacy solution for the most conservative risk tolerance. If it doesn’t break your browsing or screw with your flow, then it’s also a good consideration.
I switched from Firefox because I started to have lots of issues with video playback. My gut tells me that it’s google fucking with the competition because every other browser is fine but uses chromium and has tracking.
Anyone else experience anything like that?
Yes I often find that videos don’t play well if I skip backwards. The audio will play but the image gets stuck on the place I was before skipping back
I don’t know if you’ve figured this trick out or not but for me if I go slightly before where I want to go in the video and then hit the right arrow key to skip forward a tiny bit it resets the bug
I will try this thanks
Yeah it has usually taken a few seconds to start playback in youtube whenever I open them in Firefox, whereas in Chromium it’s instantaneous.
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This shit, and no gecko firefox for ios, is why I dont want a supposed non-profit to have a CEO.
Isn’t this Apple’s fault though?
Partially, yes. But in the EU, now Japan, and somewhere else (I think?), apple don’t get a say in it. It’s being worked on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1882872, but obviously AI takes priority over, ultimately, adblocker extensions on ios firefox.
One might say it takes priority over building a web browser
what are some good alternatives to Firefox in case this kill switch isn’t 100% thorough?
I’ve enjoyed using Zen browser lately
I’m still working with Firefox based browsers. Mullvad’s is where I’m at right now. Librewolf is my backup.
Second Zen, appreciate the tabs bar on the side after I got used to it.
There’s forks of Firefox like Waterfox or Librefox. There’s also User.js generators.
I wouldn’t trust Chrome or any Chrome forks, it’s not like Chrome or Edge are any better in terms of AI.
Zen and Floorp are good. I personally use Zen, but have Floorp setup with sideberry in case I need to use another browser for some reason.
It’s really funny seeing people more mad about the opt-out, than when they added AI stuff months ago.
Some of it is actually pretty useful, like the local on-device translation is part of their AI initiative. I don’t want to have to depend on Google or other remote servers for translation. I honestly didn’t notice any of the other AI features until people started putting articles complaining about it out.
honestly, the thing that annoys me most about this discourse is that nobody seems to be talking about what these AI features are. As in, I have seen several threads on this and your comment is the first that actually mentioned what they’re specifically doing. Like, everyone just saw “we’re adding AI stuff” and stopped thinking there… which just means people don’t even know what they’re complaining about.
I’m assuming the AI focus is what caused them to pull the “we won’t track you harvest your data” statement from the terms of use. I had thought that would push anyone who cared enough to not use one of the bigger browsers to a firefox off shoot but I guess there’s still more people to alienate
Anybody used other browsers like NetSurf/w3m/LadyBird/Dillo?
Curious if anybody had any thoughts on them here that is more knowledgeable than me.
Update: using w3m, this shit is for nerds lol but it’s cool, makes me feel like some kind of 1990’s hacker. Super impractical though unless you’re only visiting text based sites.
i’ll have you know w3m can display images. in the terminal.
Yeah… I really want something in-between w3m/etc. and Firefox, something that can display hexbear and isn’t running one of the three browser engines.
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links2 -g?
Very interesting. But it doesn’t display hexbear decently (I’m not gonna require it to be “correct,” but I do want it to be decent—vibes based measurement)
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hexbear probably uses a ton of modern features, so yeah. maybe lemmy should have a lynx-compatible mode.
brow.sh is what you’re looking for
Browsh uses a headless version of Mozilla Firefox to fetch and parse web pages
Doesn’t seem so.
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Or maybe they could you know, just not ship this shit. But who am I kidding, the corporation IS GONNA SHIP IT and YOU WILL LIKE IT.
“AI Kill Switch” is the most tech CEO shit ever lol
Time for Waterfox I guess
