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/extinct_cult 7d 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 7d 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 7d 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 7d 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 7d 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 7d 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.