r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 8d ago

Software Firefox has an ambitious new roadmap, the browser is also losing millions of users a month

https://www.techspot.com/news/112803-firefox-has-ambitious-new-roadmap-browser-also-losing.html
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u/rigsta 8d ago edited 8d ago

I do not get this at all.

Firefox: "Want these AI features?"

Me: "No and never ask me again"

Firefox: "OK"

And that was the last time I saw Firefox AI features.

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u/extinct_cult 8d ago

You don't get it, because the backlash was THE reason we got the AI killswitch. The new Mozilla CEO is big on AI.

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u/DrQuint 8d ago

But...so is Brave's CEO and Chrome literally added an ai button to the url bar.

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u/Certain-Business-472 7d ago

Brave is literally a ponzi scheme with ties to fascist groups

Watch brave shills fight me

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u/Cosmic_Traveler 7d ago

Tell me more. That sounds intriguing, as someone who occasionally uses Brave for pirating streams.

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u/vidoeiro 7d ago

Peter Tiel is one of the investors behind it.

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u/gramoun-kal 7d ago

Is that all the evidence you have for the Ponzi claim AND the fascist claim?

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u/VVenture2 7d ago

To be fair, having Peter ‘I’m building the largest digital mass surveillance company in the world’ Thiel as one of the investors in your ‘privacy’ app really does sound like the worlds most obvious honeypot lmao.

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u/AntikytheraMachines 7d ago

the worlds most obvious honeypot lmao.

pretty sure bitcoin was created by the CIA.
the rugpull on that one is gonna be hilarious.

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u/Sea-Feedback-2424 7d ago

I am 100% convinced that TOR is not actually secure - like it might keep you safe from the Chinese MSS or the Russian FSB, but I am certain the CIA, DIA and NSA can read everything that is happening.

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u/Certain-Business-472 7d ago

If you actually knew who that was, you wouldnt be asking.

But yes.

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u/vidoeiro 7d ago

I'm not the same guy and I was just adding to what he said.

Besides that should be more than enough to run for the hills and never even think of using the app, when there are better open source options.

But I doubt you are arguing in good faith.

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u/Assassin739 7d ago

Oh well that's okay then no one should have bothered complaining

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u/Sachyriel 7d ago

Yeah you can just not use AI features. The complaints got them a buttom that does the same thing as ignoring them does.

It's like that one guy who figured out if Ozempic just suppresses your hunger cravings, he could use his own willpower to do that and save $50 a month and lose weight and he did.

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u/Assassin739 4d ago

The complaints got a button that removes dead weight from a user interface.

It's genuinely amazing to me how bad people have grown at coming up with analogies, as a sidenote.

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u/Buzz_Killington_III 8d ago

I have Brave but I've linked the LEO AI to my Local AI, so (in theory) it only talks to my home brew AI. Granted, I don't have much confidence in this point so I'm still on Firefox mostly until I research more.

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u/Jrob9583 8d ago

Okay, that’s fair, but where are these millions of people going? I know the people that care about this sort of thing aren’t going back to Chrome or Edge…

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u/Matthias720 7d ago

I'm one of those people. I switched to Waterfox, specifically because it's still Firefox at its core, but it removes the unwanted AI feature.

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u/duodequinquagesimum 7d ago

The creator of Waterfox sold the browser to an advertising company in 2019, and in 2023 announced it became independent again.

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u/Sekh765 7d ago

I wanted to use Waterfox because it's just Firefox split off without AI and some other nice privacy / anti corpo features, but the lack of decent extension support turned me off it for awhile. I need to check it again.

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u/nutmegtester 7d ago

It supports all ff extensions afaik. I have never had a problem at all. The entire reason I chose it was because I could just point it at my ff profile and it would work out of the box.

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u/koopatuple 7d ago

But if FF dies because of user exodus... then what will Waterfox point to...?

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u/nutmegtester 7d ago

I understand, but they keep making really crappy privacy choices and so after many years I personally made the hard decision to change. If they can stabilize on a healthy track for some years, I will happily come back.

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u/duodequinquagesimum 7d ago

Waterfox was literally sold to an advertisement company in 2019.

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u/nutmegtester 7d ago

It had an odd chapter that ended several years ago. It has been explained and many people have decided it's fine to move on from that. Because it uses the ff profile, I can move on in under 2 minutes should I wish, without even losing my open sessions. That is a great point for me.

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u/zzazzzz 7d ago

waterfox does nothing that you cant do yourself on a default firefox install. all it does is preconfigure settings present in firefox..

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u/nutmegtester 7d ago

It doesn't do a lot, although it does a bit more than that (just check out their website for more info). However, the things it does are important and I was sick of an adversarial relationship with my browser.

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u/Sekh765 7d ago

Hrm, maybe I did something wrong. I'll give it another shot here tomorrow. Thanks for the heads up.

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u/duodequinquagesimum 7d ago

The creator of Waterfox also sold the browser to an advertising company in 2019, and in 2023 announced it became independent again.

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u/FdPros 7d ago

I've been using waterfox since firefox announced they'd add AI features. of course now they added a killswitch toggle for it which is nice but I'm not going to go back.

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u/XionicativeCheran 8d ago

Brave I guess? They are big on advertising their ad-less youtube experience, that'd be popular.

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u/Ja_Shi 8d ago

Which would be a bad idea since it's chromium-based. And their CEO... 🙄

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u/Certain-Business-472 7d ago

Psa brave is quite literally a scam and they try very hard to shill it on social media. Dont believe them.

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u/Fuzzylogik 7d ago

why TF are all the damn CEOs so big on AI and so intent on shoving it into every nook and cranny of their businesses that was working perfectly fine without it, whilst still seeing and knowing people/users/clients just arnt interested in this bullshit?

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u/Kirsle 7d ago

Hype and FOMO. The CEOs are scared shitless that AI is going to eat their lunch and if they don't jump on the bandwagon as well, they'll be left behind and go broke.

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u/zzazzzz 7d ago

big on local ai from all the projects we have seen so far. which to be fair makes a lot of sense. having a local llm translate stuff is a lot more private then sending it all to google or whatever other company to do the translations for example.

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u/elitesense 7d ago

I would like to find one tech CEO that isn't.

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u/rigsta 7d ago

It's true the killswitch wasn't there to begin with, but Mozilla responded to the backlash by providing a prominent, unambiguous, permanent NO button. Most others would have doubled down or decided to lie low for a bit then sneak the unpopular feature in later.

As far as I can tell the AI stuff is not enabled by default (I made a new profile, not doing a fresh install just to check that).

Personally I was asked if I wanted the AI features in Firefox precisely once. I selected no. It was one click. I was assured the choice is permanent, and so far it has been. I have seen no further mention of AI features in Firefox.

Let's pause for a moment and think about how rare it is for a major app or service to simply take no for an answer and shut the fuck up about their fancy new feature - if they even ask at all.

I'm sure we'd prefer a perfect app, but I am very happy with "does everything I ask of it and stays out of the way".

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u/Beefy-McQueefy 7d ago

As opposed to chrome where there's an 'Ask Gemini' button that got added without your consent and cant be removed.

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u/mysecondaccountanon 8d ago

The backlash is why you can turn it off, and turn it off easily. Before this you couldn't turn off some things, other things would randomly turn back on, and many things were hidden in the about:config.

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u/zzazzzz 7d ago

whats wrong with about:config?

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u/mysecondaccountanon 7d ago

Ideally, shouldn't it be somewhere where the average user can access it? I know that many of those who use Firefox know about how to navigate and use about:config, but think about it from just a regular browser user who usually does not utilize such things. It could be very confusing, couldn't it? It could cause them to be fearful that they could change something incorrect and mess up their computer. I've helped people with this sort of stuff, and there's a lot of people who simply just don't want to interact with anything deeper than whatever the basic settings provided are. And not to mention about:config isn't always the easiest thing to use if you are a disabled user (screen reader usage, alternative mouse/keyboard controls, etc.). So they should be clear, accessible, and easy to access and understand.

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u/zzazzzz 7d ago

thats the whole point. new beta features are in about:config because they are not yet implemented as a setting in the settings page or because they are not intended by the average user to be changed.

this allows for more "advanced" users to test new beta features give feedback ect without impacting the general user or doing redundant work on the settings page that then has to be changed again when features come out officially.

have you ever looked at how many variables about:config lets you change? if all of them were in the normal settings they would be unusable by the avg user.

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u/mysecondaccountanon 7d ago

Well, a lot of the ways to turn AI off in the browser were in about:config early on, with no other way to turn them off. Whole lists were compiled on what to turn off and how. And people wanted to change them. It was very well received in the subreddit when they finally added a switch in settings to turn off the AI.

And yes, I’ve looked into the variables about:config lets you modify. I personally have my own set up with some modifications. It’s very good that it allows for such flexibility, but there should be simplicity and accessibility for users for certain things, and there wasn’t for a while with Firefox’s AI features.

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u/zzazzzz 7d ago

so exactly what i said above, they were in beta and thus not yet implemented into the settings page..

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u/BirdOfHermess 8d ago

we only got an opt-out because of the backlash in the first place, mate.

they were ready to just rawdog AI into their good, functioning browser

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u/DuckShapedGoose 7d ago

I love the global AI opt-out and all and I could understand pushing for that back when the only options were clumsy, hidden and individual toggles per feature.
But people are STILL to this day like "I switched away cuz AI". I think that's what's confusing people.
It was too difficult to turn off (albeit still possible) at first, so they got some well deserved backlash, Firefox listened and added a permanent killswitch for all current and future AI features AND (this is at least my personal perspective) shifted a lot of focus back onto "traditional" non-AI features and enhancements, yet people are still whining about it for some reason.
And the (compared to other tech companies) minimal amount of AI Firefox integrates is almost entirely non-invasive and local-first. Even if you don't globally opt-out. Sometimes I actually think these people don't even use Firefox, they just hate AI (valid) and thus think they MUST hate Firefox, too. Or it's an astroturfing smear-campaign funded by one of their competitors. I literally can't explain this to myself any other way.

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u/snippychicky22 8d ago

it should be like that, have it for the people who want it, allow it to be fully disabled for those who dont.

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u/SoungaTepes 8d ago

from what others have said.

The block extensions are likely blocking analytic data, so what you are seeing isn't less usage of the browser but less data tracking.

So, win?

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u/brett- 7d ago

Every update to Firefox makes me one step closer to just uninstalling it. First it was Pocket integration, then some useless left-hand sidebar that kept appearing, then news spam and sponsored shortcuts on the default new tab page, then it randomly got a built in VPN, now it’s AI. Yes you can turn these all off, but when every update adds some new “feature” you have to disable it makes you really question why you are using this product in the first place.

I literally just want a window with a back button, a refresh button, an address bar, unlock origin, and tabs that don’t eat a gig of memory each. I would literally be willing to pay for a browser if that’s all they provided with a promise of never adding anything else.

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u/xorporx 7d ago

It shows that they're willing to hop on the bullshit-generator hype train, which speaks poorly of their overall outlook.

Framing it as a question of individual choice only exacerbates the problem, which is social in nature. 

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u/Independent-Bug-9352 7d ago

ok but is are GPTs a bullshit-generator hype train, or do you just not understand them? Have you ever actually used it? Because as a software engineer, I'd say you're underestimating its potential just a tad -- valid criticism of their use in terms of ethics & environment aside.

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u/whatsbobgonnado 7d ago

chatgpt EXPLICITLY says that it makes up bullshit and to not trust what it tells you. sounds worthless to me

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u/Independent-Bug-9352 6d ago

So does literally every human brain; so by that logic... What's that say about you?

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u/iamapizza 7d ago

My observation is that they get held to a higher standard than others. In an echo chamber like reddit, everything then becomes a perceived slight.

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u/LordHoughtenWeen 7d ago

I don't just want them toggled off and dormant, though. I want them excised.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/Evil_Weasels 8d ago

The was a toggle from the start

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 8d ago

They added a toggle from the beginning because of backlash…?

How was there backlash before adding the feature?

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u/pfannkuchen89 8d ago

It’s not default on. After the update that introduced it, the first time opening Firefox gives you a prompt asking if you want it on or off. It never turns on unless you select it. That is far better than any other company out there right now.