this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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[–] 58008@lemmy.world 147 points 6 days ago (10 children)

Literally no one on this green earth asked for this shit. In fact, we've been pretty direct about how much we don't want it.

It's exhausting.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 55 points 6 days ago (13 children)

Well, stupid people want it and they do use it when its shoved in their face. Like how samsung updated and BLATANTLY made their peice of shit AI button TAKE OVER THR POWER BUTTON so when you try to turn off your phone little old granny gets confused that an ai agent pops up and starts recording you. Absolutely infuriating and I wish torture on whoever implemented that shit.

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[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 91 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Firefox really does seem to have lost the plot... they don't seem to go five minutes without slamming their dick in another drawer. It starts to look like they're in to it.

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[–] Mika@sopuli.xyz 99 points 6 days ago (1 children)

TBH despite I don't like this specific idea, nor use Firefox directly, I do like the usage of local inference vs sending your data to thirdparty to do AI.

They just needed to do it OPT IN, not OPT OUT.

[–] alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 19 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 21 points 5 days ago (9 children)

then why the fuck is this newsworthy? ugh. Why is there such a huge hateboner for firefox lately?

[–] alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 16 points 5 days ago

I really don't get it either.

It's not like it's a paid product either.

[–] ZombieMantis@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago

A lot of people would rather sit around and tear down the progress being made around them for being imperfect, than pitch in to help change things for the better.

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[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 5 days ago (9 children)

Do you have to enable the feature first? Because I'm on v141 and I don't see this feature. Complaining about a useless and draining feature that you yourself enabled is a special kind of stupid tbh.

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[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 71 points 6 days ago (4 children)

According to the article, this is mainly for grouping tabs with a suggested name. Talk about backwards. Use AI to process the top websites on the Internet and create groups and/or logic to group them by keywords (cluster analysis), then save the small data structure in Firefox so it can group most websites instantly, using kilobytes of ram in the process; don't try to do this on everyone's device ffs.

Besides the heat and battery problem, this also means that the GUI is going to be non-deterministic, suggesting groups differently day-to-day based on the slight differences of input and the whims of the LLM. Burn it with fire.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 29 points 6 days ago

Oh, so that's what the fuck it was. I was wondering why my tabs were getting grouped without any logic or reason. Impressive ability to make everything actively worse

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[–] nectar45@lemmy.zip 77 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Firefox is a good example of "either you die a hero or live long enoigh to see yourself become the villian"

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 102 points 6 days ago (15 children)

It's also an example of a smaller company trying fight a mega Corp with infinite money, gained via unethical means.

People are shitting on Firefox while ignoring what they are up against.

I have no solution for their funding issue, what are they supposed to do? Charge for the browser or ads? There's literally no other alternative and I don't know what the solution is.

What I do know is that once FF dies and chrome fully owns the web we are well and truly fucked.

Honesty it might already be too late.

[–] scholar@lemmy.world 66 points 6 days ago

They could stop paying their CEO so much and hire a few more devs, refocus their identity on privacy and performance (their offline ai translation is actually really useful), and actually give people the sense that their donations will be well spent.

[–] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 38 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I could not disagree more.

Mozilla has used the most powerful cheat code in history: infinite money for free.

Google cannot let Mozilla go under or they would become an actual monopolist, triggering a lot of laws that would force them to diversifying/selling the browser.

They don't want any of that headache so they're pumping Mozilla full of money, making sure that they can always operate as "the other browser engine".

The issue is that Mozilla's management seems to be completely incapable of doing anything interesting. Instead of ensuring that Firefox is the lightest, most optimised browser on the market while also being packed full of features (or at least full-fledged add-ons, not this crap they have), they do... mostly nothing.

Their last major update was "vertical tabs", something that Chromium-based browsers had for around a decade.

Their previous major update was integrating Pocket...

Meanwhile, PWAs still barely work, add-ons are still dependent on the website being loaded instead of working on the browser level, the whole thing still feels bulky.

Mozilla management needs to be replaced and then we might see some movement on the market.

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 6 days ago (4 children)

You're forgetting the fact that laws are currently only being triggered if said company slanders dear leader.

If Google kisses ass you best believe they would completely allow them to be a monopoly and would ignore any laws being violated

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[–] pheggs@feddit.org 85 points 6 days ago (19 children)

I wish Mozilla would just debloat the browser, focus on performance and making browsing a good experience. But unfortunately their revenue situation is bad. At this stage, they won't even manage to survive through donations after annoying their main user base.

[–] haloduder@thelemmy.club 32 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Their revenue is fine. They just waste it on unnecessary bullshit.

They're a business, after all. They don't care about their products. They care about doing the least amount of work while making the most amount of money.

It's not about keeping the lights on. It's about living as luxurious a life as possible.

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[–] _AutumnMoon_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 5 days ago (4 children)

where is this AI bloat exactly? I use Firefox every day and see no difference

[–] Semicolon@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago (1 children)

There is none, this is all AI=bad knee-jerk reaction. From what I can tell, so far Firefox has 3 ML-based systems implemented:

  • Site / text translation - fully local, small model, requires manual action from user
  • Tab grouping suggestions - fully local, small model, requires manual action from user
  • Image alt text generation (when adding images to a PDF) - fully local, small model, looks like it's enabled by default but can be turned off directly in the modal that appears when adding alt text

All of these models are small enough to be quickly run locally on mobile devices with minimal wait time. The CPU spikes appear to be a bug in the inference module implementation - not an intended behavior.

Firefox also provides UI for connecting to cloud-based chatbots on a sidebar, but they need to be manually enabled to be used. The sidebar is also customizable so anyone who doesn't want this button there can just remove it. There's also a setting in about:config that removes it harder.

I actually really like the way Mozilla is introducing these features. I recently had to visit another country's post office site and having the ability to just instantly translate it directly on my device is great.

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[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 65 points 6 days ago (11 children)

I just want a web browser that's not based in the USA.

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[–] yarr@feddit.nl 21 points 5 days ago (22 children)

Mozilla is no longer about making a great browser. Mozilla is about making sure their Google bucks come in each year without fail. They don't work for consumers anymore -- they work for Google.

Throughout the years, the market share of Firefox has shank and shank and their C-Suite has continued giving themselves raises.

Mozilla Inc. has been very sick for a long time. It's a shame that one of the last pieces of honest competition for web browsers belongs to them, because I'm not sure how much longer they will be able to shamble on like this.

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[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 50 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Just make it an official extension ffs...

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[–] comador@lemmy.world 41 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

At least they offer a fix for it:

Head to about:config in a new tab, accept the risk warning, and use the search bar to find the controls.

To kill the AI chatbot feature, search for browser.ml.chat.enabled and set it to false.

To stop smart tab grouping, search for browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled and set it to false.

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[–] themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 59 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Mozilla does it again, adding useless crap.

[–] xiwi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (10 children)

Make a stable, privacy respecting, robust browser with a powerful extension environment? No let's try do do chrome 2

Mozilla could solve all of it's issuesby just removing all of the executives

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[–] raldone01@lemmy.world 43 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (32 children)

I just wish one could donate to firefox development specifically. Then they could rid it of all the advertisement and tracking stuff.

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[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 28 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Awful Idea? Anal Intrusion? Actually Irrelevant?Activating Idiocy? Adding Incompetence?

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[–] massivemeatballs@lemmy.world 32 points 6 days ago

I'll keep using LibreWolf as my main browser while keeping an eye on Ladybird with my fingers crossed.

[–] Pjonathan@lemmy.world 19 points 6 days ago

I was actually wondering why it felt like my Firefox was dying, possible could align with this.

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