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I think people screaming "but AI is the future" doesn't recognize what the problem is. The problem is not AI. The problem is that Mozilla keeps jumping on fads instead of focusing on their browser core. There are a tons of "we bundled all the latest crap" Chrome forks out there. Nobody needs more those. Stop pushing bells and whistles. Give us more extensibility instead. Keep supporting v2 manifest and add more. There were genuine technical reasons for why XUL and NPAPI had to die, but we need an equally powerful alternative.

And yea, having a faint through about removing adblock support, yet alone speaking it aloud is a really bad sign for Mozilla's future.

Of all the AI features added recently, local translations is one that I would be OK with being enabled by default. It's useful, and its value proposition is much less dubious.

I'm going to chime in here, I think 1. This is great and Mozilla is listening to it's core fans and 2. I want Firefox to be a competitive browser. Without AI enabled features + agent mode being first class citizens, this will be a non-starter in 2 years.

I want my non-tech family members/friends to install Firefox not because I come over at Christmas, but because they want to. Because it's a browser that "just works." We can't have this if Firefox stays in the pre-ai era.

I know Mozilla doesn't have much good will right now, but hopefully with the exec shakeup, they will right the ship on making FF a great browser. While still staying the best foil to Chrome (both in browser engine, browser chrome, and extension ecosystem).

This feels less like an “anti-AI” stance and more like a trust and control issue. For browsers especially, users have very different threat models and performance expectations, and “always on” AI features blur that line quickly. An explicit opt-out makes sense, but I wonder if the more important question is whether these features can be implemented in a way that’s truly local and auditable. If users can’t clearly understand where data goes and what runs on-device, toggles become a necessary safety valve rather than a preference.

I'm glad to see some mozilla employees standing their base in the comments. That guy trying to make the point that Mozilla was wasting resources chasing trend only for an employee to say it was a few people checking it out while 1000 people continued work on the normal stuff is nice to see.

The non mozilla people in that thread are so petty. Maybe it'd be better to have them go use another browser and stop dragging down firefox's reputation.

This is exactly the kind of boring, unsexy feature that actually builds trust. It’s the opposite of the usual “surprise, here’s an AI sidebar you didn’t ask for and can’t fully disable” pattern. If they want people to try this stuff, the path is pretty simple: ship a browser that treats AI like any other power feature. Off by default, clearly explained, reversible, and preferably shippable as an extension. You can always market your way into more usage; you can’t market your way back into credibility once you blow it.

Firefox should release a separate build - "base", "core", "classic" - clearly, I am not a marketing person, but idea behind it, that this is only a browser without any extra features added. No "AI", no studies, no account sync. Only bare minimum browser, that allows user to do their internet things and, if they ever desire, will install all extra bells and whistles as extensions. No need to agree to any EULA either (remember, that it was added to Firefox?). And, the best part, all existing users will still keep using the same old Firefox version, no surprises for them. Now, I assume that someone will tell me, that this version already exists and is called ESR :)

Average Joe or Joan will install some crap AI assisted browser if some idiot in Tiktok or FB says follow me and I will DM you a special link to get baby-clothes for -10% discount. Hope your family is not that. My spouse despite reading HN etc thinks that anyway privacy is lost - so why notget at least that 10% discount.

Another problem for Mozilla:

- If they don't pivot to AI people will leave it. Yes, some hardcore RMS fans will use some clone of Firefox - all others will not

- If they adopt modern AI people scream

- Same happened when Mozilla accepted DRM (for Netflix etc). Many tech writers, commentators were against that. But if Firefox did not adopt it then all those tech writers would have used Chrome to see Netflix. No one of these commentators say they will boycott Netflix.

Why not make them disabled by default, with the option to turn them on?

Have it as a stand alone plugin.

I should have to manually install this AI stuff.

Mullvad browser doesn't have an option to disable all AI features because it doesn't have any.

(The Mullvad guys took Tor browser for its resistance to fingerprinting and removed the connection the Tor network. You don't need Mullvad VPN to use the browser)

https://mullvad.net/en/browser

I still don't want to use an "AI browser". I don't want to use a browser where all or most development effort goes into "AI features" that I need to disable. I want a browser where the development effort goes into making it better at browsing the web.

Is there a fork of firefox where you have all the same core functionality and support for extensions but with all the mozilla services (pocket, safe browsing, forced crap on the new tab page, any AI service, etc...) removed?

Could someone summarize the problem with Firefox's AI features?

At least when I last checked (months ago), none of those features that involve communicating with external servers would work unless you configure them to (i.e. provide credentials to an LLM provider).

Was I wrong? Have things changed?

I actually saw the “summarize this page” feature in the right-click menu today and clicked on it out of curiosity. The box that appeared had a “remove AI features” button which I accidentally clicked. Now the feature is completely gone and I don't know how to get it back. (Don't really care much, wasn't planning on using that feature anyway, just giving feedback on my first impression)

I can't imagine any reasonable use case for having AI tightly integrated into a browser (or an operating system, for what it's worth). Why not make a browser plugin or a web page or an app? I don't get it.

It should be a plugin. Anything that isn't directly related to the core mission of a web browser should be a plugin.

If they want to position themselves with a point of difference from competitors, they could provide a settings list of AI features with check boxes for each.

This would tap into the insight that not everyone dislikes the same AI features. For many AI isn't a dirty word, but rather they've seen plenty of examples where it's simply annoying or over-taxing resources.

For example some like AI to build a quick reference summary from a set of web results, but don’t want a full agenic-style AI to extend beyond that.

This could potentially entice users not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and maybe even make a few converts.

How about we don't enable AI features by default in the first place?

Doesn't matter?

https://youtube.com/shorts/FObvkFtr2ZU?si=U6fCphjmGcNMb5ac

Until they change this back they are not trustworthy at all.

I think Firefox is an excellent browser. Their problem is simply that they have too much revenue for too many years. They need a fraction of that. If I were the ceo, I would drastically cut back operations. Scale down the org to 10% of its current strength, keep shipping a solid and boring browser, accept donations that directly support development of the browser. No fads, no ai, just a high performance, bug free, standards compliant browser. The users and donations will come. Firefox will survive. One year of google revenue can kar them for 10 years of lean operation!

Internet economy already made a full circle with this once before: at first, ads existed to sell things online for advertisers, and make money for publishers (also as a machine for circular deals to propel stock valuations, during the dotcom boom). Then they became so pervasive and annoying that eventually they just became a method of making user experience worse, and get paid for ad-free, thus making money. Today, no one cares about performance of those ads, they are just a replacement of "nag screens" of the shareware era.

It sounds like AI will made this circle a lot faster.

I'll never understand why people feel so strongly about features like this and that they have to be opt-in.

I don't use bookmarks. Should those be opt-in? What about the other 85% of the browser's features I don't use?

I hope Zen disables this by default, or completely removes it if that’s an option.

Firefox had options for many things, until those options were removed

I'm not sure why people still believe this, especially developers. We're starting to literally just build AI into everything... you're not even going to know what's AI and what's not. The phase of labeling everything with cute little sparkles is starting to end and AI is going to be used similarly to external libraries.

If you don't like AI you need to seek legislation and pressure your local politicians. It's the only way to stop it.

I don't really care so much about that. I worry more about the CEO speaking about blocking adblockers like it's a normal business decision. Wtf

5 step plan for Mozilla to succeed against the Behemoth Googzilla and the leviathans of MAWS.

1. build a team in Europe to create an email service comparable to gmail/protonmail

- domains: mozmail.com, mmail.com, godmail.com, pmail.com, dogmail.com, meowmail.com

- promoted as a simple everyday email – no overly complicated/advanced federati features in order to increase inter-operability, reduce spam and dealing with federalism

- for more advanced features, integration links with something like signal, or a hosted comms platform

2. invest heavily in Firefox core development and service features

- push for system resource and performance optimizations, even if it requires extensive architectural changes

- focus on perfecting a core browser experience then developing an extension API that allows a level of UI customisations that XUL did, have unsafe/hackers warning for any extension that uses this API, even official ones

- invest in KeePassXC ux and integrate it as a first class and core feature in Firefox that is useable by hackers, consumers and enterprises – offer paid services for simple database sync/backup, as well as a decent managed solution for enterprise.

3. Expand further with a suite of other services that have both self-hosted and paid management extras

- calendar and email client, universally usable between providers, but first class with Firefox and mmail.

- integrate something like libreoffice into a desktop client that can also be embedded into a Firefox tab.

- straight forward self-hostable teams communication platform, managed cloud versions also availabe

- self-hosted / managed file storage platform with web UI with integration links to other services

- all of the above require a unified web, desktop and mobile ux

- offer further software and hardware integrations to completely streamline personal digital management

4. Extensive marketing and brand exposure over TV and social media, while staying charitably non-profit and recognizing the digital roots

- Use the firefox, gecko and other digital animals as icons

- Themes and scapes from origins such as mosaic/netscape

5. In this scene Mozilla continues knocking down the buildings of the titans.

This would be useful for many people who want to avoid AI features being forced on them by every piece of software imaginable. Hopefully, a centralized kill switch like this will also make it easy for Firefox forks such as Zen and Floorp to let users enable AI features if they want to without changing about:flags.

This was made clear when they talked about this previously but once again people don't want to hear that and instead want to rant about AI. The only thing stopping Firefox is its own users.

I would pay $100 a year for a Firefox that just focused on privacy and was competitive speed and features (at rendering) with chrome.

i don't even want the code present on my machine, only being held back by a checkbox that may or may not be correctly respected. this is what extensions we invented for.

Yeah the option is called Waterfox, Palemoon, or even Vivaldi.

Didn't even know Firefox was planning on adding AI features. I wonder how much more bloated it'll be.

How about disable them by default or I switch browsers to something else?

after the disaster of comms from the new ceo, this is really great to see.

I am out of the loop, but what AI features does Firefox offer these days?

Where's the kill switch to remove AI from development?

Honestly this should've been introduced with the new AI Features from the start, it's just shipping slightly too late to fully regain my trust.

get your non AI versions here while they last:

Index of /pub/firefox/releases/

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/

A LITTLE HELP:

How do I revert Firefox to a previous version and keep my profile intact?

https://superuser.com/questions/1643618/how-do-i-revert-fire...

When a company has monopolistic practices, its products ride their anticompetiveness to majority market share by force of their dominance. The result is the Netscapeification of anything that competes with any monopoly. A monopoly anticompetitiveness needs to be dealt with powerfully by Congress to increase competition. Though the lobbyists of these anticompetitive companies and the billions deployed from the lobbying companies effectively is a significant detriment to competitors, healthy competition, and always in many subtle, loss of innovation ways, the consumer. This is the tip of the iceberg for anyone in competition to the oligarchical status quo that is in effect, and detrimenting the consumer in multitude ways that you are not comprehending.

When a company has monopolistic practices, its products ride their anticompetiveness to majority market share by force of their dominance. The result is the Netscapeification of anything that competes with any monopoly. A monopoly anticompetitiveness needs to be dealt with powerfully by Congress to increase competition. Though the lobbyists of these anticompetitive companies and the billions deployed from the lobbying companies effectively is a significant detriment to competitors, healthy competition, and always in many subtle, loss of innovation ways, the consumer. This is the tip of the iceberg for anyone in competition to the oligarchical status quo that is in effect, and detrimenting the consumer in multitude ways that you are not comprehending.

Can I ./configure it completely out?

maybe they should have an option to enable it instead? i don't want this being the default

Oh, this is great news!

better add a button to *enable* AI

Firefox has AI features?? wth

The problem with the "Trust me bro." stuff is that it only works if you are trusted and after the last decade Mozilla is anything but.

....until it doesn't.

> We've been calling it the AI kill switch internally. I'm sure it'll ship with a less murderous name, but that's how seriously and absolutely we're taking this.

Honestly, is anybody reading what's getting written anymore? If it gets taken seriously it would ship with an enable-AI button, not the other way round.

Can we please stop calling LLMs "AI"? It's obvious now that there is no intelligence here and no trying to make it talk to itself and call is "reasoning" is not the answer.

what i hate most about this (and the discussion happening in the comments), is that nobody is even defining "AI". "artificial intelligence" is not a technical term. what is mozzila doing exactly? what does it mean to put AI in the browser?

I don't understand why it's so difficult (impossible?) with Firefox to use your own private AI server (that's not running on localhost). With Brave it's pretty easy.

The difference between this and "will have an option to enable AI features" shows what the development resources will be focused on. I mean, f** JPEG XL support; we have a bigger investment fish to fry

There are two things to note here:

1. Pocket/etc is not even ancient history,

2. At this point I don’t think Firefox or Mozilla ought to be taken without a truck of salt.

A bonus third :D

3. People bleeding their hearts out for Mozilla and calling others out for constantly criticising Mozilla — it’s history baby, history!