@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

@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.

@sotolf @barubary @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs it is literally Jake's job to be like this

@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

@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

@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

@giacomo @alextecplayz none of the current AI features are involved in opening a new tab.

@RandomDamage https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/116006634077716055

@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.

@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.

@firefoxwebdevs nah, sticking with Waterfox where I don't have to worry about "ai" bullshit at all.

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
- Vivaldi

Also follow them:

@Waterfox @librewolf @Vivaldi

and compare the way they interact with people in contrast to what you see in this thread.

@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

@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

@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.

@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?

@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.

@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"

@jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs

you said that it's not really useful to know that people who don't like AI don't like AI

and then you said:

> To be clear, I'm not someone who has personally found AI generally useful in browsers (aside from a couple of one-off automations), but my feelings aren't strong enough to deny those features to others.

Jake Archibald (@jaffathecake@mastodon.social)

@froztbyte I suppose that's literally true. But, I also think a mountain is made out of the molehill that is AI in Firefox. The vast majority of the dev time is on other things. To be clear, I'm not someone who has personally found AI generally useful in browsers (aside from a couple of one-off automations), but my feelings aren't strong enough to deny those features to others.

Mastodon (mastodon.social)