TL;DR: Mozilla recently released AI controls for Firefox — a single control panel that lets people disable AI features in the browser or pick and choose which to leave on. On the surface, this sounds like a win for user choice in an era of AI-everything.
  • vapeloki@lemmy.world
    111·
    20 days ago

    Oh, someone said something against Firefox.

    As someone who donated regularly to the Mozilla foundation: adding AI in a browser is a stupid idea, always will be and alone the fact that Firefox spends time and resources in this feature means, they have to earn that money again.

    I will not donate anymore, as long as they develop WI features for Firefox.

    Vote this and this comment down as much as you like but fact is, that money must come from somewhere, and the biggest source of income is still selling Google the default search engine spot and outer questionable sources.

    This is not sustainable and a bad day for user choice.

    • prodigalsorcerer@lemmy.ca
      710·
      20 days ago

      Look, AI is dumb, and probably not a good thing to integrate into a browser. But if it turns out to be an important thing in the future, then not integrating it right now would be worse than having it.

      There’s a measurable fixed cost to adding AI features. There’s room for potentially infinite losses (i.e. entire loss of market share) if they don’t have AI features and need them. The calculus on this decision is pretty lopsided towards integrating AI, even if everyone thinks it’s likely to be unnecessary.

      • Solumbran@lemmy.world
        8·
        20 days ago

        This is absurd.

        This is like saying that if nazi propaganda becomes the main selling point of web browsers, then firefox should add it just to stay relevant.

        The advantage of firefox is (was) that it takes a stance instead of blindly following market trends. Following AI, no matter how immoral and damaging it is, just to avoid a hypothetical loss, is absolute bullshit.

        They are doing it because they lost the will to take a stance, and this is what is killing them. Straying away from the opensouce, privacy centric stance is costing them their user base, and people who weren’t wanting such a stance are not going to move away from their usual browser with AI and whatever.

        It’s exactly the thing that leftist parties do when they try to appeal to the nazis, they just get buried in their own stupidity.

        Why do you think firefox-based browsers are getting more and more popular? It’s because they bring back firefox where it should be, because no one with enough brain to want to use firefox, wants a firefox with data collection and AI slop.

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
    2·
    20 days ago

    Ok, I started to disconnect about halfway through that article and skimmed the rest, but I don’t see how this is a trap.

    I just see someone highlighting LLM categorisation and the legality of training data… but no trap.

    Or, am I the one stepping blindly into a trap?

    • yoasif@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      20 days ago

      I’d say the trap is believing that Mozilla is actually on your side when it comes to AI in Firefox. It isn’t - they are trying to get you to cosign their theft of the commons by tricking you into thinking it is all “good”.