TL;DR: Mozilla has a new CEO and a new mission: transform Firefox into an AI browser. That has run into some snags, as Firefox users don’t seem that interested in AI. Mozilla is forging ahead, utilizing deceptive patterns (previously known as dark patterns) to nag and annoy people into enabling AI features. You can see this in the introduction of Link Previews, an extremely invasive anti-feature that exists solely to push AI into your experience.

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[–] 11 points 10 months ago

Every AI pusher is a rapist at heart.

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

    There are only two options for browsers right now blink and gecko and it's morally wrong to use blink. As much as I detest Mozilla's new direction, it's not nearly as bad as google. Never use a browser utilizing the blink engine (chrome derivatives).

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    By in large you are correct, but let’s not forget about WebKit, which, I believe, browsers like Gnome Web (Epiphany) uses. I don’t think Gnome Web is on par with Firefox features and standards compliance wise, but I’ve found it usable for most of my day to day.

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  • 13 comments in c/technology@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 20 points 10 months ago

    I'm really grateful for the introduction to deceptive patterns here.
    I was not aware of it, and I think it's important to have language that can describe specifically how tech companies are trying to coerce people.

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  • [–] 23 points 10 months ago

    Why won't these pesky peasants shut up and give us our data?

    Who could have known that the people who voluntarily use a tiny niche browser mostly for privacy/idealism reasons wouldn't wany just another AI browser?

    Honestly, how out of touch with their user base can they be?

    If I want a good browser that works with every website, I'd take something chromium based. If I want an AI browser, I'd take one of the many chromium based ones.

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

    Not this seems overly reachy Firefox hate. This feature pushed months ago didn’t it? I managed to turn it off without even having to dig, and I know this because I don’t even remember how to do it.

    Firefox defaulting a link preview gesture to on, but making the AI off by default, isn’t a dark pattern. Every new update doesn’t turn this back on if previously disabled. And trying to twist this into “Firefox is using dark patterns to trick you into using AI” just feels like an attempt to shove “Firefox bad” down people’s throats.

    I find the amount of Firefox hate Lemmy seems to display so odd, especially when literally every other browser out there, from chrome to brave to opera, and everything in between, barely ever gets even a mention.

    This stinks of negative advertising, and I’m getting so fucking tired of it.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I tried the link preview feature as well, and to say the response to it is overblown is putting it mildly. I haven't looked at the source code, but based on how it appears to work I'm not sure it even qualifies as AI. It basically selects 2-3 sentences from the reading mode version of an article, but the selection is so bad it might as well be random. Not surprising as it's a tiny model that runs locally and is only given a second to make the selection.

    I actually laughed when I saw it - this is what all the weeks of fuss were about?

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

    Its open source right?

    We can just make a “dumbfox” browser without ai

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    I've switched to IronFox on mobile and Waterfox on computers, personally.

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  • 5 comments in c/linux@programming.dev view that post
    [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    I have been specifically thinking about how big tech keeps manufacturing consent for AI, having it on by default and counting accidental undesired uses for "95% of people adopted our AI features!" and all this… glad to see an article that has a title reflecting my thoughts. Looking up manufactured consent for AI usually brings things on how people can use AI to manufacture consent or change narratives, not on "consent to AI" being manufactured itself.

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

    Wait, is "dark pattern" taboo now?

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    For me, as long as Debian still packages it and disables these features, I’ll be fine, but LibreWolf looks more and more tempting these days, and having tried it a bit, I can live with the minor annoyances.

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  • 2 comments in c/linux@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 4 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I honestly think link previews are a good idea and can be very beneficial for users if done right. It would be good to know if a site could generally be trusted before I click a link. It‘s just hard to do that right, though.

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