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Vivaldi CEO explains his anti-AI stance: most users don’t want AI in the browser (cybernews.com)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Jon von Tetzchner, CEO and founder of Vivaldi Technologies, refuses to integrate AI features in its browser and wants human engineers, not AI, to write its code.

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[–] 13 points 23 hours ago (4 children)

I hate the fact that it's so hard to buy an android phone without it coming with a load of proprietary apps that I can't remove. If I want their casino shit, their stupid health apps, whatever - I'll download it myself. Being unable to uninstall it really pisses me off. I'm pretty sure it's practically malware. And the AI shit is just as bad - phone I'm on now came with at least 3 different AI apps for whatever. I did actually manage to remove two, but they keep trying to reinstall, could be hiding behind my launcher. And I bought this phone 2 years ago, I can only imagine it's even harder to get away from these days.

Maybe I'm out of touch, but I think most people just want an operating system and the opportunity to install what they want on it.

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  • [–] 4 points 18 hours ago (1 child)

    One of the happy accidents that has come from American technofascism is this rennaisance of open-source programming and development and a renewed interest in digital sovereignty. People have been building alternatives to what the tech oligarchs have been cramming down our throats, and it's not only more secure and more functional, it's getting more and more accessible to the public.

    Take Graphene and PostmarketOS for instance. They're both extremely easy to install on the right hardware. I haven't had any complaints yet! :)

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  • [–] 2 points 7 hours ago

    I bought a Pixel 9A and a Pixel tablet and installed Graphene because I wanted control over my own device, no unnecessary spyware apps and no forced AI and the ability to just install what I want and both have been great. Everything I've needed has basically just worked (a couple of apps required me to change a setting) but there's a few major outliers to that 'it just works' that fortunately I don't need - like the VW app. I was shocked at how easy it was to install and by Lemmy standards I'm not very tech savvy (although I had an issue with a Linux update on my computer last night and was able to get it working again, so by normal people standards I'm a hacker lol).

    Right now it's fantastic but I worry Google's crackdown on "sideloading" is going to hinder that open source adoption - anyone who has already done so is probably going to be less squeamish about a couple extra steps and whatever bullshit warnings Google throws at them but for new normies I worry they're more likely to be scared off. It's also a sign Google is going to take more steps to fight our rebellion - I did just find out the Pixel 11 will be getting Graphene so I was going to say that's another Google attack but good news on that one, initially they thought it wasn't going to be possible.

    How's Postmarket compare to Graphene? I went with Graphene because fewer development targets are usually a good thing for the end user, but that tablet end of support is closer than I'd like...

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  • [–] 4 points 21 hours ago* (1 child)

    I mean, much of it meets all the criteria to be called malware, so it is "walking like a duck" and "quacking like a duck".

    All that bloat is typically cross-marketing agreements made with the makers of those apps to subsidize the phone's cost without user consent. The part that I find weird is that there have been almost no marketing trials from major players testing the waters to see how much of a market there is for the same products that are not subsidized in this way, available at "full price". Maybe they're afraid that would draw too much attention to how atrocious the existing offerings are by comparison. It might put the privacy discussion more into the public discourse, which could be bad for their "business model".

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  • [–] 4 points 21 hours ago

    Yeah, agreed. My suspicion is that the major players have considered this and decided that the value of the customer data they gain from their bullshit malware apps is more than they would make by selling a clean phone, even at premium prices. I don't know how the numbers break down, but I'm sure they do and they are probably right. Maybe most people would rather have a cheap phone full of tacky bullshit. It would be nice to have the choice tho!

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