“Mozilla has been adding in llm & ai related features to Firefox for a while, enabling them by default without asking the user… The main problem with this is users are having this forced on them with no gui option to disable these features.”
Article contains instructions for disabling the LLM through about:config.
Oh, come on… They are enabling you to use LLM is you want to. They are not forcing anyone.
https://support.mozilla.org/da/kb/ai-chatbot
And here is why it is better than most alternatives out there… An Open Source AI, build with transparency and ethics should be something to be exited about - for all who use LLM… For the record, I don’t. I don’t have any use for it, my brain works fine… But I have an exception, and that’s my own private LLM, running only on my machine…
So, please take a chill pill, and do some research before yelling “WOLF!”
Article says the LLM is now enabled by default and there is no UI to turn it off. Is that wrong? Your link refers to Firefox 133 which is quite old by now.
Added: found the lobsters thread, https://lobste.rs/s/gntidf/firefox_forcing_llm_features
It’s hard to tell from there.
Added 2: HN, I haven’t looked at this yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45858959
Yeah, I didn’t even notice the button was there since I had the sidebar hidden it was easy enough to right click and remove don’t get the big deal it’s not even ‘on’ if you click it you have to set it up
For those that don’t mind local AI, there’s a setting that uses localhost:8080 as ai endpoint. You can throw open-webui, or ollama/others at that port.
Mozilla Corp making sure they alienate even their 10 remaining users…
I really wish they wouldn’t. Firefox is one of the last good browsers.
It’s the last good browser base but all the good browsers nowadays are forks of that base.
Hopefully something other than Ladybird comes to take it’s place so we aren’t so reliant on Mozilla in the future…
Ladybird doesn’t have any real financial power. If Firefox dies, so does every fork… And have a little faith in Mozilla. Just a little - not blind, just a little.
There’s the Servo browser, which has a lot more going for it than Ladybird.
Yeah that’s fair.
Why do you say other than ladybird?
The ladybird team is one of those “we don’t respect people’s identity and sexuality because we don’t do politics” type of people. Also racists.
Because we need a lot less fascists and their software in the tech space.
Nitter Link & Bigger writeup on it
Ah, it’s a shame that we can’t just have cool software. But such is the world now, it seems. I’m honestly a bit surprised at there being much of that in FOSS, I thought it was really quite commie-coded, but it seems every second project I think is interesting is somehow problematic.
I’m on Hyprland at the moment, which I’ve heard a couple things about, including in that article, but I’m looking at Niri. Are they less controversial?
disable llm & ai related features in firefox.
I’m not going through that. sudo apt -y purge firefox*
What do you use instead?
LibreWolf is an option, but there’s also some curated user.js alternatives for Firefox, like BetterFox.
I’ve tried LibreWolf, and liked it, but I had to work backwards to get it going and even then, a lot of websites I need to use just don’t work well. For now, I’m just using my own user.js, adding stuff as I go.
Not the gp but I started using LibreWolf last year after my camel’s back was broken by Mozilla Corp shenanigans, I am very grateful for it
Unfortunately, at the moment, we can’t trust Mozilla and by extension with AI items so these things were removed.
https://codeberg.org/librewolf/issues/issues/1919#issuecomment-4988409
I used librewolf and waterfox as well for a bit, until I noticed that were lagging behind on updates.
Now I just run vanilla Firefox auth arkenfox.js user prefs. Disables everything you’d want out of the box
there’s many forks that have the stuff turned off by default like Librewolf and Floorp
I personally use Qutebrowser. there’s many better options than straight up Firefox.
Thanks everyone. I will look into using Librewolf. I’m still on Firefox because there is a Debian LTS package so it’s the path of least resistance. There doesn’t seem to be a Librewolf package in the standard repo so I’ll have to check a bit further.
There is something to be said for making modifications instead of forks so you are never waiting for an update.
Here’s my 2 cents: https://github.com/celenityy/Phoenix
And check the link for feature comparisons.
I would think most non technical users would just use a different browser.
Not only them. I’m tired boss.
Well, you don’t have to use them. So they can’t force you to use Ai features.
Kind of the opposite of forcing. Some people want it, I don’t agree with them, but better to not lose them to chrome.
But srsly Firefox nags me more about PWAs and tab groups than AI.
This is true. Statistically, people are choosing not to use Firefox…
