alt Hacker NewsFirefox is becoming an AI browser and the internet is not at all happy about it
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I’m an AI skeptic. I think a lot of these pronouncements about how AI is going to revolutionize the workplace and/or society itself are made by snake oil salesmen who are looking out for their own profits. And yet. I think skepticism can go too far.
One area I really do think AI is going to take over is web search. Primarily because web search these days is so shitty but that’s besides the point. AI is absolutely going to be a core feature used by the users of web browsers, and a web browser is the core of what Mozilla offers. They absolutely should be present in this space. And I hope, even though it’s an immense challenge, they might be able to offer an alternative to the aforementioned snake oil salesmen.
I desperately want the kind of success we used to have searching on google back over a decade ago. Relevant results. A few annoying ads started appearing with paid placement, but we all ignored them.
Nowadays google search results are so cluttered with paid promotion that the genuine content creating websites and blogs are drowned. So we turn to AI not because it's better than the old straightforward search, but because it is better and currently less ad-laden than the current search?
Am I happy about it? No. But I don't understand the huge backlash in all the comments yesterday. It felt like everyone overreacted. For me, Firefox still checks off the most boxes of what I want in a browser.
AI features you say? They could start by taking the alt-text generation model and making it browser-wide if blind people want it, not just for PDF's.
I would normally say I’m fine with it if I can turn it off, but making agentic browsing secure is currently an unsolved problem, so I’d have concerns with the risks this will pose for people unaware of the lethal trifecta.
As long as I'm still in control, and it's actually useful, I don't see any issues with this direction, especially given the competition.
In fact I regularly use the summarize page functionality in one of my profiles and find in very convenient.
This seems like the usual Firefox criticism, where they get schtick for doing the same as all the others who don't.
As long as I can deploy a pkg with the AI features completely disabled administratively, I'm fine with it.
I'd like it a lot more if it was strictly opt-in, and they made non-AI LTS releases, but I understand that's at odds with eyeball acquisition
Are there any suggestions for a minimal browser to use to interface with embedded / IoT? The firefox devs assume it is only used to access The Internet. For example, SSL scare-screens when connecting to a local 10.0.x.x address, or it trying to autofill a password for 192.168.1.1 which is nonsensical as the end devices are different in different (physical) locations. Don’t get me started on Apple devices auto-disconnecting from ad-hoc wifi networks without internet access.
So guys. What do I replace firefox with?
I'm on Debian, and my requirements is that I'm able to run uBlock Origin. In addition containers and vertical tabs would be nice to have.
What are the options here?
What does it take to make a rebranded fork of Firefox popular similar to Brave or Edge?
Ideally the fork should compete with Chrome and not Firefox for market share while acting as a hedge/warning against bad decisions from Mozilla and its leadership.
I have been not happy about it up until this post. While reading the article, I thought about it differently.
What Firefox provides today isn't drawing in new users. Those of us who use Firefox do so for a number of reasons related to privacy or security or what not.
I simultaneously like being able to use ChatGPT to look stuff up and I hate that I'm feeding the machine a profile of me. I don't use ChatGPT nearly as much anymore mostly because of that sick feeling I get in my stomach knowing whatever I tell it will absolutely be abused in some way some how.
Nobody is building a very good "thing" that lets you use AI services with a solid layer of protection. That is a new market that deserves a product. I'm not saying that I think putting AI in Firefox is a good idea. Just that I can finally see the motivation.
Personally, I think the "solution" should be some kind of stand alone product that maybe has integrations into Firefox if you have both of them installed. Keep it in it's own cage. Make the only possibility of it existing on my system be me choosing to install a specific app. And if I'm going to do that, let me also use it outside of Firefox if I want.
But at least now I see a reason for what seems like such a bone headed decision.
This is like people railing against images in their webpages or that run their browsers without JavaScript. Like that LLMs are a fundamental paradigm shift in how we interact with computers and the web. How it all plays out is up for debate but there's no doubt that 10 years from now LLMs will play a role in nearly every interaction we have with a computer. The only way that's not true is if something better comes along.
Pining for pre-AI world is like wanting families to gather around the radio. Those days are gone.
[dupe] Lots of discussions:
Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288491
Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46299934
No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
Can we just not be irrationally mad at Mozilla for once?
It is beyond me that here, on HN, of all places people do not understand the criticality that FF is to the free and open internet. Use WaterFox or whatever, but stop picking a different color of Chrome.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out Mozilla is trying everything they can to stay relevant. Literally everything they do ends up with tons of HN comments making complaints. Tons of complaints coming from people who haven't even used FF in a decade! It feels like a disinformation campaign but I'm pretty sure you all just like to hate on Mozilla and justify your usage of Chrome.
We're just fucking ourselves over here. Yes, there's reasons to complain about FF. There's no shortage. But are they truly big enough reasons to hand over the keys to the internet to a singular entity? And to Google of all companies?! Who the fuck cares about this AI browser stuff, you can opt out or use a fork like WaterFox who makes that the default. Guess who's AI stuff you can't opt-out of?
Is it really worth it?
Is 3 clicks to uninstall AI seriously enough justification to give Google the internet?
What are we even doing...
You can largely disable it in Firefox in about:config. I'd prefer a one clicn setting for ease of use. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1556081/how-to-disable-all-t...
Unfortunately, the Internet doesn't really pay the bills, and that's the issue.
Yes, this seems to suck. But I've been wrong about plenty before. I'll keep an open mind.
This is what you get for not caring about projects like thorium or the Firefox version of it.
I’ve still got my ublock origin in a far faster version of my web browser than what normies use.
Man is there anything left that isn't a total invasion of privacy??
It's the governments' fail.. this kind of software can't be profitable, so it should be funded via grants for common good.. these did not arrive though.
Speedrunning to the grave it seems.
No shit
If I can turn it off as they claim I don't care too much other than it's development time wasted towards something I won't be using. They could have spent time fixing some of the sites that don't work correctly, implementing standards that are missing or just improving performance and memory usage. All of those things would be welcome as would some improvements on the mobile version it's not super usable I find it kind of irritating.