By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
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By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi so grateful that you do this for all of us thank you
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@Vivaldi I’d like to be able to hide the AI summary on Google’s search results page. This feature is very inaccurate and often gets things wrong. Plus, there’s no option to turn it off. It forces the summary onto users who don’t want it and wastes electricity.
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sure, some people choose AI
some people choose not to get vaccinated
rather the same phenomenon to me: poor choices
and likewise, you don't have to use Vivaldi. that's your real choice here
Vivaldi has ripped out the AI cruft, which most of us cheer, so go use your Chrome and enjoy yourself elsewhere
you dig?
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@AlexTheStampede @lazza @Vivaldi
oh i see, we're doing the perfectionism routine. mmm
i use a variety of browsers. which has nothing to do with the topic here
wait... what happened to the other account? it got nuked? damn what did they say?
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@pl @cholling @Vivaldi Linux is the only meaningful competitor to Apple and Microsoft OSes, and it's a niche thing that is mostly used for servers rather than by end users. It's also now subsidized by corporations because they use it as infrastructure.
Browsers on the other hand are an end user thing, so the value proposition of trying to break Google's (and to a lesser extent) Apple's hegemony is much different - especially since Google is also propping up Mozilla to suck even more oxygen.
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@AlexTheStampede @lazza @Vivaldi
oh i see, we're doing the perfectionism routine. mmm
i use a variety of browsers. which has nothing to do with the topic here
wait... what happened to the other account? it got nuked? damn what did they say?
@benroyce I still see it, probably the normal “block and move on”. But my point is that they’re not against useful tech, but slapping a LLM in everything because it’s cool isn’t the definition of useful. Worse, if you see it as a way to make potentially half assed and misunderstood summaries, or answering questions in a similar fashion. That way it’s less than a useful feature, and more of a hazard to users, with the cherry on top of making it a new entry point for data harvesting.
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By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi and this is why I use Vivaldi instead of Chrome
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@beeoproblem @pl @cholling @Vivaldi right, it's infrastructure from Android's perspective, while browsers are much more inherently user facing.
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@EricCarroll @Vivaldi Ungoogled Chromium is completely FOSS, while Vivaldi has some proprietary, closed source components.
@Luna @EricCarroll @Vivaldi In my experience Ungoogled Chromium feels incomplete, since it's removed features from Chromium that rely on Google services without replacing them. (I had similar frustrations with IceCat.)
Vivaldi reimplements things like ad blocking and sync (and yeah, some of those parts are closed source), and optionally connects to some google services like phishing/malware checks and extensions. I'm not 100% certain, but I think all of those can be turned off.
https://kvibber.com/reviews/software/ungoogled-chromium/
https://kvibber.com/reviews/software/vivaldi/ -
By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi
Do you strip out any of the "AI" code, to make sure it's nonfunctional and can't be re-enabled by some malicious hacker, or to you just make it "off by default", pat yourselves on the back, and consider your job done?I am interested in a browser that *removes* "AI", as opposed to merely "disabling" it.
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@benroyce I still see it, probably the normal “block and move on”. But my point is that they’re not against useful tech, but slapping a LLM in everything because it’s cool isn’t the definition of useful. Worse, if you see it as a way to make potentially half assed and misunderstood summaries, or answering questions in a similar fashion. That way it’s less than a useful feature, and more of a hazard to users, with the cherry on top of making it a new entry point for data harvesting.
are you sure?
refresh
because this is what i see, on mastodon.social, logged out:
what the heck did the guy say? do you know?
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are you sure?
refresh
because this is what i see, on mastodon.social, logged out:
what the heck did the guy say? do you know?
@benroyce yep, even on a different client I can still see the account. Last post is, if you’ve seen it, a single “
” to your hard stance message. And I see nothing that could justify a suspension or anything but, past this, I’m not comfortable sharing let’s say a screenshot of the profile, if a block is in place. But don’t worry about that, I too do it from time to time: enough negativity in the world without having to deal with things that annoy us personally! -
@Vivaldi
How close is Vivaldi to Ungoogled Chromium?@EricCarroll @Vivaldi idk
why not use helium https://helium.computer/ -
@benroyce yep, even on a different client I can still see the account. Last post is, if you’ve seen it, a single “
” to your hard stance message. And I see nothing that could justify a suspension or anything but, past this, I’m not comfortable sharing let’s say a screenshot of the profile, if a block is in place. But don’t worry about that, I too do it from time to time: enough negativity in the world without having to deal with things that annoy us personally!it's not a block, the account has been nuked on its home server
i think you see a cache on your server that will update eventually
if you open the account on its home server, https://mastodon.social/@lazza , you should see the same
they had a four year old account and it got suspended on their home server soon after our rather pedestrian low stakes disagreement
!?
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By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi When I mentioned the news someone said "are you sure Opera isn't doing that too?” I said (unprovoked) well I know that Vivaldi isn't
I didn't know how right I was! Thanks! -
it's not a block, the account has been nuked on its home server
i think you see a cache on your server that will update eventually
if you open the account on its home server, https://mastodon.social/@lazza , you should see the same
they had a four year old account and it got suspended on their home server soon after our rather pedestrian low stakes disagreement
!?
@benroyce ohhh, you’re right, it’s gone now! Must’ve been my instance caching things like you said. On the bright side, I might know what happened: one of the latest posts was about being increasingly annoyed with the amounts of… ah, I don’t remember the exact wording! Anyway the strong negativity about AI, regardless of usefulness. So maybe that was the last straw that tipped the scale in favor of leaving the platform?
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@benroyce ohhh, you’re right, it’s gone now! Must’ve been my instance caching things like you said. On the bright side, I might know what happened: one of the latest posts was about being increasingly annoyed with the amounts of… ah, I don’t remember the exact wording! Anyway the strong negativity about AI, regardless of usefulness. So maybe that was the last straw that tipped the scale in favor of leaving the platform?
That's crazy
I understand like bigotry but I didn't think the mods had such a line on AI
But I don't know. Maybe sealioning directly at Vivaldi crossed a line. The mods may react to big account complaints or just trolling such accounts on their own
Really bizarre
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@gbsills @kyu3a @Vivaldi DuckDuckGo, by default, is all-in on AI. You want https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
