CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@alvan@social.lol

#Firefox doesn't "balance a little marketing": in the screenshot provided by @firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social you can see at least two #DarkPatterns at work:

• a popup-wide button
• no mention of #AI whatsoever: "Suggest more of my tabs" is a very misleading label for "opt-in into AI controlled tabs from now on"!

#Mozilla is pushing #AI down the throat of most users, knowing very well that they would never activate it and without explaining them how it works.

And note that this has nothing to do with your personal preferences or people reading changelogs: as others have pointed out, if Firefox is so eagger to let people know about the new AI features, the could just showcase them just after update, providing a non misleading button to enabled each of them, like many other software do: https://ui-patterns.com/patterns/Guided-tour

As it stands, and given the alternatives, Mozilla #UX is overly malicious and I guess it would not pass any serious #GDPR compliance check.

Indeed I still wait for an answer to these questions: https://snac.tesio.it/giacomo/p/1770122154.401646

I guess it's because those model are updated frequently from #BigTech's servers around the world and Mozilla doesn't want people to realize how often their online status is revealed to such corporations through update checks by their " #privacy friendly" Firefox AI.

@alextecplayz@techhub.social

@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social

Sorry: I was talking about creating a new tab group, obviously.

@alextecplayz@techhub.social

@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social

Not quite

The point is that permission prompts are shown when a permission is required to fulfill a user request.

To create a tab group in #Firefox you do not need #AI, so such popup-wide, easy to mis-click, button is a gratuitous waste of user attention. It's just an #ads of a feature that you want people to use and get used to.

As for this being #privacy preserving: where are the models downloaded from? Is it a #CDN that could identify otherwise logged users by their IP and thus learning about the fact they use such model? And how often Firefox will chech for model updates?

@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

@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social

So people can trigger a download by error clicking on that huge popup wide button, right?

Isn't that a well studied example of #DarkPattern?

How many times such button will be shown? Each time a user create a new tab or only the first time?

Each time you raise the probability of erroneous click!

Please make these #AI enhancements fully opt-in.

@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social

Please invert the default: let people who want #AI enhancements enable them in the settings.

@alextecplayz@techhub.social

@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social

#AI enhancements being enabled by default is a #DarkPattern abuse from #Firefox.

Please make these #privacy violating tools opt-in, as #European law requires.