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Firefox dev clarifies that AI features will be 'opt-in' and there will be a 'killswitch' to disable them (fedia.io)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] 27 points 10 months ago (13 children)

They say a switch will be built in. There is no switch yet. Which means the deluge of little popups about AI tab grouping and the "look at Perplexity" messages are not going away until these changes are actually released.

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  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago (12 children)

    the killswitch is in about:config

    browser.ml.enable
browser.ml.chat.enabled
browser.ml.chat.menu
browser.ml.chat.page
browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge
browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge
browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled
browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled
extensions.ml.enabled
browser.search.visualSearch.featureGate
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  • [–] 24 points 10 months ago

    That's... Not really a switch. If somebody has to go to a secret place, get past a warning sign, and type in a half dozen secret commands... it sounds more like an espionage movie than the flipping of a switch.

    And people have already complained that some of those flags don't affect newer ones, which Mozilla keeps adding. We might as well say Microsoft has a setting to turn off telemetry, never mind it's also hidden and it also keeps getting switched back on.

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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago* (6 children)

    the killswitch is in about:config

    Ah yes, the easiest place to put a kill switch for the average user, as opposed to the complexity of a toggle in settings.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (5 children)

    People on Lemmy will hate to hear this but the average user wants AI integrations.

    That's the main problem Firefox has. They are trying to appeal to a wide audience but their core users would never let them do anything that might do that. Then the core users sit there and wonder why Mozilla struggles and demand they work exclusively on the browser, an endeavor well known to not be profitable.

    The average user doesn't give a shit about privacy either as evidenced by the state of the current Internet.

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  • [–] 21 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    First, citation needed on these people who want AI. People on LinkedIn will hate to hear this, but I don't think the average user does.

    Second, I don't understand your point. Do you actually believe the average user would feel compelled to switch to Firefox? Why? Instead, Mozilla is taking aim at their current users.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    The average user uses llms like a search engine because search sucks rn

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago

    It sucks specifically because the megacorps want to make the AI look better than it is and because they want to keep people on search results pages...

    The shittyness is a feature to these vultures.

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