I feel like with all the AI news and headlines we are seeing lately, I bet many people including me were ready to just be angry at another Mozilla AI bloat.
This is a good step. It's unfortunate it came after significant user blow back from rapidly deploying AI features without surfacing these controls.
I hope the Firefox team learns from this because a vibrant, healthy Firefox is vital as an alternative to the browser engine duopoly controlled by commercial tech giants.
Firefox is supposed to be the browser were you don't have to dig through the settings every few months or year to find out what anti-patterns they added and disable them.
I stopped using it 2 years ago because that's no longer true. Time and time again I was having to dig around for whatever new setting got created and defaulted to a bad setting for a bad reason (spoiler: they want money)
At that point what am I gaining by not using Chrome, Edge, or what I ultimately use now, which is Brave. At least with Brave I get useful features like having access to Tor for basic things, great cryptocurrency support, etc.
> Is there a way to simply have these not present at all, for people who don't want any of them?
This is quite literally what the article you're replying to is about.
> None of this is useful. Just stop.
Translations and tab grouping both seem pretty useful to me. Image alt text is probably very useful for those who need it. The remaining two, meh, but I'll just turn them off.
perhaps someday ai will add the simple ability to pin a tab group like a normal tab but alas all it can do is suggest what tabs i group (a thing i am already intimately familiar with as the one who opened all the tabs)
> “AI is changing the web, and people want very different things from it,” Ajit Varma, Firefox’s vice president of product, writes in the announcement. “We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI. We’ve also heard from others who want AI tools that are genuinely useful. Listening to our community, alongside our ongoing commitment to offer choice, led us to build AI controls.”
some people want nothing to do with AI
other people just want the AI to actually do something
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 48.7 ms ] threadIMO, hard to do, though that would streamline browsing and up the quality of it.
Cheers.
But for once, it is a good thing
Features they could have chosen not to introduce in the first place.
https://chipp.in/security-privacy/total-opt-out-how-to-use-f...
I hope the Firefox team learns from this because a vibrant, healthy Firefox is vital as an alternative to the browser engine duopoly controlled by commercial tech giants.
I stopped using it 2 years ago because that's no longer true. Time and time again I was having to dig around for whatever new setting got created and defaulted to a bad setting for a bad reason (spoiler: they want money)
At that point what am I gaining by not using Chrome, Edge, or what I ultimately use now, which is Brave. At least with Brave I get useful features like having access to Tor for basic things, great cryptocurrency support, etc.
* Translations * Image alt text in Nightly PDF viewer * Tab group suggestions * Key points in link previews * Chatbot providers in sidebar
Is there a way to simply have these not present at all, for people who don't want any of them?
None of this is useful. Just stop.
This is quite literally what the article you're replying to is about.
> None of this is useful. Just stop.
Translations and tab grouping both seem pretty useful to me. Image alt text is probably very useful for those who need it. The remaining two, meh, but I'll just turn them off.
> “AI is changing the web, and people want very different things from it,” Ajit Varma, Firefox’s vice president of product, writes in the announcement. “We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI. We’ve also heard from others who want AI tools that are genuinely useful. Listening to our community, alongside our ongoing commitment to offer choice, led us to build AI controls.”
some people want nothing to do with AI
other people just want the AI to actually do something