One of the top stories on Hacker News today was a post arguing that Mozilla shouldn't accommodate any usage of AI in Firefox because (understandably) people were mad at Big AI companies for all the horrible things they've done to users and the internet and society. But I think people are ignoring the reality that *hundreds of millions of users* are using LLMs today, and they need to have tools from platforms that will look out for their interests. https://www.anildash.com/2025/11/14/wanting-not-to-want-ai/
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@anildash I would really like an option to not have AI in my software or devices.
@anildash I fear you are largely right.
@anildash then, why not make a separate browser? they won’t gain new users but will lose those of us left, their core users.
@anildash Haven't we seen enough evidence yet that "everyone else is doing the dumb thing so if we don't join in we'll be left behind" is a shortsighted argument? Would also be interested to see any data you have suggesting that people who enthusiastically use AI and want it in the browser are among a majority of browser users.
@anildash I use a desktop LLM separate from the browser. If I wanted anything AI related from a browser it would be to 'a new type of view source' , what websites and content I am viewing came from an LLM (a way to filter content by model)?), the openness of that a model, its training data? ways I could improve it. Firefox can do whatever with AI; but what I personally want is to have control and influence not another way to passively consume and hope for the best.
@anildash Sure. But where are they to find them?
@anildash try #Lumo from #Proton. i use it sparingly & support wikipedia first for instance, as a first option. for very complex questions i use lumo, & turn all other #AI off in my browsers. as with everything, you need to have your moral compass out before you make a decision to use a service or buy a product. do AI have morals yet?
@anildash
L take. Why does anyone still trust Mozilla?
@freediverx "L take" is the last bastion of the person with no argument. What trust, exactly, have you lost? What's the _actual_ harm that you've suffered — not "I don't like the way this was communicated", but an actual harm that you have suffered, and in what way did you engage with taking agency to remedy that harm? What platform do you use now?
@anildash The harm is already all around. The web is drowning in a sludge of fake sites. Half the videos people send me are fake rubbish. My friend doesn't see the point in being an artist anymore.
Mozilla pushing that all as a positive with exciting new features that they make hard to disable is insulting.
By all means, use Firefox and don't use AI. I don't give a damn about that, that's great. But think about this question deeply: What browser do you want your friends and family to use when they're using AI tools? We told people "social media from big companies is bad, get on Mastodon and Bluesky". And that works — provide useful alternatives. But if we simply say "stop using this thing you find useful, and I won't give you any alternatives", they'll just ignore us. And Big AI will win.
@anildash "AI" is inherently demon tech, it must be destroyed if art is to survive.
@anildash Big AI will win either way, whether we destroy Firefox for it or not. That's not the point. The point, as with all these questions, is whether there is ONE alternative left for people who don't want all their data to be hand delivered to American fascists.
@anildash I personally have had no issue not using AI in Firefox without changing any settings. People seem to be looking for stuff to be upset about with a lot of this.
@anildash @codinghorror I left Firefox when they couldn't say they weren't selling user data.
Brave seems like a great alternative. There are quite a few others like Vivaldi & Orion for example.
Yeah - saying “Stop Using Amazon” and do random searches to find things has definitely NOT worked with relatives.
@anildash is there a possible middle ground? Perhaps a good plug-in for ai that could fulfill that need? Without it being in every part of the browser?
@anildash Thank you for articulating this.
I am so, so tired of self-righteous folks here proclaiming that literally no one, not a single soul, wants these features, and that the same literally no one will ever again recommend Firefox as a result. It's arrogant posturing on their part, and detracts from a reasoned conversation.
I've struggled with how to respond to those posts, and you succinctly and clearly articulated every half-formed thought I've had about the topic, and plenty I hadn't. 🙂
@anildash I think it's rather a matter of explaining them why something they find useful (AI) is actually not that useful because it's all smoke and mirrors and bad at the tasks they assign it. There are usually AI-free alternatives for their use cases that do the job better.
@anildash How is a browser from Mozilla an alternative after the ToS ruckus?
@anildash i don't want my friends and family to use "ai" tools — and if they find them useful, that says more about them than it does the tools.
@anildash I find it ironic that one of the things I find LLMs most useful for is helping me with the documentation gap on getting FOSS things to work.
Before, if I was trying to install something, following the instructions, and I got an error because my distro was ever so slightly different than the one the instructions had been written for, my choices were:
1. Spend a month reading the code to understand how the thing actually works
2. Spend a week reading obscure forums
3. Give up
@anildash And in that context an option "4. Typing the error into Co-pilot and getting an explanation of how it has gone wrong and how to fix it" is incredibly useful. Sure, sometimes the answer is off. So is 90% of the advice given in obscure forum posts!
@anildash One argument I've seen against using an LLM for this is that "this isn't what they're being advertised as for or funded for". So the fuck what? Just because my use case will never justify the bubble valuation doesn't mean it's not a use case.
Horse, water, drink.
I can proselytize about the dangers of 'AI' until the cows come home. If they won't listen to me on the matter of a world-killing mind virus which will never produce anything of meaningful value, they're certainly not going to listen to me when it comes to changing their desktop wallpaper -- or anything in between.
@anildash yes. do not say "don't use this" without providing an alternative.
@codinghorror I mean, I have sympathy for "Don't do this, and let's figure out what to do instead!" Because sometimes it's hard to solve problems and we have to band together to find alternatives. But "don't do this bad thing, dumbass, be smart like me" sure is guaranteed to fail.
@anildash ok but smart.. like how? what do the "smart" people do, exactly? Can you describe it? Just move to a remote island in the pacific and sit motionless doing nothing? I mean.. what?
@anildash “what brand of cigarettes do you want your kids smoking when they light up?”
@anildash If we don’t have a smoking section in our restaurant, people will eat somewhere else and Big Tobacco will win.
@anildash We want an alternative without any AI bullshit at all, which is what Firefox used to be and what it should be.
> What browser do you want your friends and family to use when they're using AI tools?
None at all. Or rather the one where it’s opt-in. Nobody *needs* to use these.
@anildash All indications are that Mozilla plans to roll out more integrations with existing AI platforms.
How does that help the situation exactly? You say that "social media from big companies is bad" -- what is the corollary here with AI? Is there a "good" AI that Mozilla is secretly working with?
You say Big AI will win.
What is little ai?
@anildash I really wish we had a LARGE button to turn off all AI in Firefox, or at least a clear choice how to use it - explicitly.
I think not allowing users to choose is a huge underestimation of users. Designers know how to help people in this kind of decisions if it’d be a priority. AI has its uses, but currently putting everything under one single label of “AI” makes choosing and discussing about it difficult.
@anildash really? There is no shortage of options *with* AI. Only *without*. It feels like you are barking up the wrong tree.
