AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
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Stop portraying Mastodon users as the "anti-AI crazies".
Instead, ask yourself: "What is the relation between Mastodon users & Firefox?"
The answer:
An overwhelming number of Mastodon users used to be your champions.
They are tech people who used to recommend Firefox to the normies in their life. A crowd of mini-influencers, recommending your product.
And I don't understand why you go out of your way to alienate exactly these people.
@duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard hi duke can you please give some context,i am new here in mastodon so i have no clue what are you talking about and beside that what do you recommend instead of firefox cause as far as i know google opera and brave all of them worse in many aspects
Edit:sorry duke i just saw his interesting comment about users here but i am still asking you if you have better recommendation -
@duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard
It is impossible to read this post without thinking of this recent article about Wikipedia’s internal strife and how communities become ossified and refuse to adapt to new conditions and then promptly die.
The organization version of progress advancing one funeral at a time
Is Wikipedia's Volunteer Model Facing a Generational Crisis?
The clash over AI-generated summaries reveals Wikipedia's challenge in adapting to younger audiences' media habits.
IEEE Spectrum (spectrum.ieee.org)
@jonathankoren @duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs
> the volunteer community that built this encyclopedia has lately rejected a key innovation designed to serve readers
this article is AI shilling, nonsense and that should have been obvious at a glance
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@ddelemeny @froztbyte how do you feel about a11y tooling that analyses images to describe them? Therefore providing people with visibility into things they otherwise wouldn't have.
That also is generating content in a format that was never on the web. Nobody had the opportunity to make sure it's right and nobody ever will.
@jaffathecake @froztbyte exactly the same. You don't go around the ethical problem of the absence of authorship by invoking pathos (and borrowing legitimacy from disabled folks is morally sketchy to put it mildly).
Even more so as available technologies are far remote from being able to convey intent, context and nuance. This is misplaced half-baked solutionism.
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@jaffathecake @froztbyte exactly the same. You don't go around the ethical problem of the absence of authorship by invoking pathos (and borrowing legitimacy from disabled folks is morally sketchy to put it mildly).
Even more so as available technologies are far remote from being able to convey intent, context and nuance. This is misplaced half-baked solutionism.
@ddelemeny @froztbyte ok, then we simply disagree.
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@sotolf @barubary @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs it is literally Jake's job to be like this
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@jonathankoren @duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs
> the volunteer community that built this encyclopedia has lately rejected a key innovation designed to serve readers
this article is AI shilling, nonsense and that should have been obvious at a glance
@davidgerard @duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs Is “shilling” what the kids call “an opinion that makes me uncomfortable because it doesn’t comport to my preëxisting beliefs”?
This type of stimulus-response behavior is really beneath you.
You could have stopped to think about how organizations actually adapt without buying into the billionaire hype, but instead it’s just banging rocks together and grunting
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@ddelemeny @froztbyte how do you feel about a11y tooling that analyses images to describe them? Therefore providing people with visibility into things they otherwise wouldn't have.
That also is generating content in a format that was never on the web. Nobody had the opportunity to make sure it's right and nobody ever will.
@jaffathecake @ddelemeny I’ve seen a number of accessibility-using people critique this stuff, fwiw. A number of them echo the “let me choose my own”
For my own part: given the error rate problem combined with the (presumably) reduced capacity for the affected user to verify veracity/accuracy, I think it’s *even more* dangerous when this stuff hallucinates or miscategorizes
I agree the *idea* is nice, but do not believe that this implementation/generation has solved the problem
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs It's good that you are bucking the trend and even putting controls in at all, but AI features are such that they absolutely require informed consent
Which means default off
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@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social
Not the same thing #Firefox devs: I cannot do a video call without the microphone on, but I can totally open a new tab without #AI assistance!
So the first permission is required to serve my request, the second is just you advertizing a feature you want people to use.
@alextecplayz@techhub.social@giacomo @alextecplayz none of the current AI features are involved in opening a new tab.
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@firefoxwebdevs It's good that you are bucking the trend and even putting controls in at all, but AI features are such that they absolutely require informed consent
Which means default off
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@froztbyte @barubary user research has been carried out, so repeating it doesn't seem necessary at this stage. I've been asking if there are details I can share publicly, but I haven't heard back.
@jaffathecake @froztbyte @barubary If you can't share your data and methods, I give that even less credence than an informal and biased poll question on a social network. Much like cigarette industry research was shared or not shared based on whether results would have helped or harmed the business model, my default presumption is that user sentiment data will be not shared because executive fiat has already mandated work counter to user desires. "No AI" is already a non-option.
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@jaffathecake @ddelemeny I’ve seen a number of accessibility-using people critique this stuff, fwiw. A number of them echo the “let me choose my own”
For my own part: given the error rate problem combined with the (presumably) reduced capacity for the affected user to verify veracity/accuracy, I think it’s *even more* dangerous when this stuff hallucinates or miscategorizes
I agree the *idea* is nice, but do not believe that this implementation/generation has solved the problem
@froztbyte @ddelemeny my favourite talk on the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij-GLix2QUQ
Back to translation, I use it with awareness that some of the subtleties may be wrong, and that feels much better than having zero access to the content in a language I understand. I see that others feel differently, but that simply isn't my experience.
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs nah, sticking with Waterfox where I don't have to worry about "ai" bullshit at all.
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@duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard hi duke can you please give some context,i am new here in mastodon so i have no clue what are you talking about and beside that what do you recommend instead of firefox cause as far as i know google opera and brave all of them worse in many aspects
Edit:sorry duke i just saw his interesting comment about users here but i am still asking you if you have better recommendationHello @flytox , welcome to Mastodon!
(If you really want the full context, read this thread, but I do not recommend it. It will not make your life better.
)As for browsers, the situation is not great.
️Just as a suggestion for a starting point:
Try out:
- Waterfox
- LibreWolf
- VivaldiAlso follow them:
and compare the way they interact with people in contrast to what you see in this thread.
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@duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs they're aware of the sentiment. I'm sure you're aware that Mastodon has a high representation of folks who don't like AI, so presenting evidence that Mastodon users don't like AI is kinda… well… not really useful.
@jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs evidence was clearly that "folks who don't like AI" don't like AI *BUILT INTO FIREFOX*
you are wasting everyone's time and misrepresenting all the arguments as an irrational denial of AI that others might find useful.
It was always about the absurdity of integrating something, ANYTHING, that is not critical to web browsing, directly into the browser instead of making it a plug in, on equal ground to 3rd party developers.
Instead, this nonsense
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@giacomo the features don't do anything until you interact with them (like in this screenshot).
At this point, a local model is downloaded, and the processing is done entirely on device, preserving privacy.
Same goes for translation. It happens on device whereas most other browsers send the text off-device.
@firefoxwebdevs @giacomo
If it presents the option and doesn't say what it's doing that's not informed consent.The "first launch" popups that y'all normally do with a descriptive splash screen and a big button that can be skipped to enable the features in the first place is a *perfect* place to present it where people who do want it will see it
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@davidgerard @duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs Is “shilling” what the kids call “an opinion that makes me uncomfortable because it doesn’t comport to my preëxisting beliefs”?
This type of stimulus-response behavior is really beneath you.
You could have stopped to think about how organizations actually adapt without buying into the billionaire hype, but instead it’s just banging rocks together and grunting
@davidgerard @duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs holding up Mozilla as some sort last bastion against the tide is pretty absurd. They’re the poster child of failing to adapt!
Does this mean that Mozilla knows what they’re doing here? Hell no! They’re all a bunch of idiots. But they are idiots that understand that the Google largesse is ending, and a world with three corporate controlled key infrastructures is Bad.
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@jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs evidence was clearly that "folks who don't like AI" don't like AI *BUILT INTO FIREFOX*
you are wasting everyone's time and misrepresenting all the arguments as an irrational denial of AI that others might find useful.
It was always about the absurdity of integrating something, ANYTHING, that is not critical to web browsing, directly into the browser instead of making it a plug in, on equal ground to 3rd party developers.
Instead, this nonsense
@fasterandworse @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs let me be absolutely clear, yet again: I do not consider the arguments being presented here to be irrational.
If you feel I've said that, can you point to where?
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Hello @flytox , welcome to Mastodon!
(If you really want the full context, read this thread, but I do not recommend it. It will not make your life better.
)As for browsers, the situation is not great.
️Just as a suggestion for a starting point:
Try out:
- Waterfox
- LibreWolf
- VivaldiAlso follow them:
and compare the way they interact with people in contrast to what you see in this thread.
@duke_of_germany welcome to our safe corner of the internet, @flytox!
We can only speak for ourselves, and we've never added AI to our browser because our users are happy with taking the decision to use or not use AI in their own terms, instead of having it forced down their throats because it "has" to be built-in. Some thought we were being too "old-school" by not jumping on this bandwagon, since everyone else was doing it, but honestly, we're just listening to our community, the way we've always done.
You can read our whole stance from august '25 here: https://vivaldi.com/blog/keep-exploring.
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@froztbyte @barubary user research has been carried out, so repeating it doesn't seem necessary at this stage. I've been asking if there are details I can share publicly, but I haven't heard back.
@jaffathecake @froztbyte @barubary what I'm hearing here is "the correct reaction is to harass every single person involved in this debacle until they're too afraid to pull more of this shit"
