Mozilla can't imagine a web without AI.
So I imagine there soon is going to be a web without Mozilla.
Discussion
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@rysiek @glynmoody about the worst browser has the largest usage?
@rysiek What's the problem if you can opt-out (or even not opt-in at all)?
@cattail I simply do not trust Mozilla to respect these choices, based on how they have a project that explicitly touts ignoring consent:
https://transmom.love/@elilla/115564272417922503
They also keep adding stuff I need to keep opting-out of.
There are other problems as well of course. Environmental impact, opportunity cost (money used on pumping the AI bubble are not used for other, arguably more important improvements), and so on.
@rysiek which is sad :(
@rysiek Isn’t Firefox market share mostly people using it out of habit, maybe someone just installed it for them, and not users who care about the web? I guess the constant UI changes do more harm to Firefox popularity than the ‘AI’ stuff.
@rysiek@mstdn.social it's amazing how the Chrome market share seems to have grown after they have started being hostile to adblockers
we live in a society
@rysiek
Wait… IE is still alive somewhere?
@rysiek i can imagine a web without mozilla leadership.
@rysiek yeah honestly though i’m glad firefox exists because that means gecko gets maintenence so the fork i use doesn’t have to implement its own engine. i hope a better engine will soon pop up
@rysiek Most of that is not a failing of Firefox or Mozilla. They are up against the monopoly search engine that can spend infinite advertising dollars promoting their browser. They fund Mozilla as an antitrust hedge, the lifeline that keeps them around. Otherwise they would have been crushed like all the rest.
The AI stuff is just insult to injury, as far as I'm concerned.
Why would anyone, at this point, use Firefox over Chrome?
Diehards like me are absolutely disgusted with the AI BS Mozilla is pushing down everyone's throats, to just mention one thing. We will find a fork, or eventually hopefully a new independent browser.
Anybody else doesn't give a fsck so why would they use a cheap Chrome knock-off Mozilla made Firefox into, if they can get the real deal for free?
Well done Mozilla. You outplayed yourself.
@rysiek #Mozilla has the only #rendering engine that is not directly tied to a #GAFAM.
They are struggling to find reliable ways of financing the development of #Firefox.
AFAICS a "local first" AI is a way to lure the 95% of web users.
Losing #Firefox would be a sad new, even weighing in all those issues
@rysiek
Some of us care that our browser is open source, in other words, not loaded up with vendor spyware/malware. It might be reasonable to run the open-source Chromium, but not actual closed-source Google Chrome.
@brouhaha I care about this as well. But I also care about the immense power Google has in the browser space, and how it wields it. Chrome/Chromium are a no-go for me.
@rysiek At work I still run Firefox, because it's an approved application, and the forks aren't.
At home, I've phased it out for Librewolf.
I don't want AI in my browser. I just want a browser.
@rysiek Because they're our last hope for the open web and open web standards otherwise the internet will be controlled at a corporate level or are you that naive? I will use Firefox or a gecko based web engine until the web breaks on them.
@justincrozer good luck. I will switch to the first usable, reasonably standards compliant browser engine that is different than whatever Mozilla, Google, or Apple have on offer the moment it becomes available.
@rysiek
1. adblock
2. Chrome is not "AI" free, either: https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/18/google_chrome_ai_browser/
firefox with the ai turned off and ad blocking installed is still, for me, the least bad option.
@rysiek under your metaphor, the reason would be not be a nazi.
@DiogoConstantino and the wave of elections won by far-right parties all over the world shows how that works in practice.
Just as Firefox' homeopathic market share does.
@rysiek I'm not saying it works, but nobody is being forced to vote for nazi and to be one, they a choosing to do it, and to be.
@DiogoConstantino thankfully, while I do have strong opinions on Chrome, choosing Chrome is not exactly indicative of "being a nazi". So, not exactly sure where you're going with this.
@rysiek It's a totally adolescent "But...everybody else is doing it!", then parent discovers that exactly 3 classmates are doing this thing.
@rysiek Because Firefox is the only browser not controlled by Google or Apple maybe?
@pixelcode they are literally trying to out-Google Google.
Have you seen this?
https://transmom.love/@elilla/115564272417922503
@rysiek Not sure how this comes even close to the outrageous scope of Google's monopoly which is practically unique in modern history.
@pixelcode I am not arguing for people to use Chrome. I am arguing that we urgently need something much less CHrome-like and AI-laden than Firefox.
You can disable ai in Firefox atleast I guess.
@rysiek@mstdn.social The two are still not alike. Let's not act like they are.
Mozilla is the browser vendor equivalent of centrist political parties.
> We can do whatever the fsck we want because who you gonna vote for, the actual far-right?
> Also, we need to try to out-far-right the far-right because that's where the voters are!
And then there's the inevitable surprised pikachu face when people just don't choose them.
Either because they vote for the actual far-right, not the cheap centrist knock-off; or because they refuse to make a choice between shit and crap.
@rysiek I guess the important thing is that you've figured out how to shoe-horn your unsoliticated political whinging into a convo about browsers. Yay you.
Maybe you'll cool down in a month. I'll give you that chance.
@rysiek I definitely made exactly that comparison in 2020.
@ajroach42 great minds think alike, I'm just a bit slower 🙂
@rysiek I was trying to find the old post but it's lost to the abyss.
My point was that as long as mozilla/the dnc exists, we'll be stuck without a real alternative to chrome/the gop, because mozilla depends on Google in the same way the dnc depends on the gop.
@ajroach42 sounds about right
If you're wondering what brought this fire and brimstone angrythread about, it's these two separate but related things:
https://transmom.love/@elilla/115564272417922503
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-window/
If you're wondering what the alternatives are, it's kinda grim, but my personal way forward will be:
- @librewolf for the short-to-mid term
- @servo once it matures enough to be usable (really rooting for this one!)
@rysiek Oh, wait, this ENTIRE thread is you whinging. Never mind. Goodbye.
@rysiek @librewolf @servo there's also waterfox, which appears to be closer to mainline Firefox but without the AI and without as many headaches as making Librewolf workable brings
@rysiek
@zenbrowser is a nice un-AI-ed Firefox fork with some nice ideas, at least for desktop.
(Please don't tell me they're problematic as well...)
Luckily Mozilla isn't pushing AI for Firefox Mobile yet..
@librewolf @servo
@rysiek @librewolf I'm also keeping my fingers crossed for good progress on the servo front.
In the meantime, I just learned that Fedora doesn't currently package librewolf, so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat is the most available side-stepping option in Fedora-land.
A brief web search didn't give me a clear impression how those two forks compare. Maybe someone here has insights?
I'll add to the list of “usable alternatives right now” also @Waterfox (better JPEG XL support than @librewolf IME) and @palemoon (forked “classic” XUL Firefox, so it still has e.g. built-in RSS support, but still kept standards support mostly up to date).
And if you're wondering why I had not mentioned Ladybird, this is why:
https://hyperborea.org/reviews/software/ladybird-inclusivity/
@rysiek
A person who would exclude non-males from his surroundings happens to be fash?
How did this could happen?
— Jack's complete lack of surprise
@rysiek It is very rare that I read of something or someone “doubling down” which doesn’t end with them being the baddies.
@rysiek "This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics" but it is for him 🙄 would include women also be personal politics?
@rysiek what about ladybird?
@intru not touching it as long as Andreas Kling is involved:
https://hyperborea.org/reviews/software/ladybird-inclusivity/
@rysiek hmm, it's on opt-in thing?
@filiplachert the first thing, the AI scraper, shows that Mozilla doesn't give a fsck about consent and preferences. Whatever is opt-in now, can at any point become opt-out, or mandatory. I am not interested in seeing where that goes.
@rysiek Seriously when I first realised they live solely off Google money I knew instantly that is another "AOSP based" solution. By this I mean just distraction, another Google fund troyan horse waiting to reveal its true colors and diverting our attention from real solutions. You cannot build Google alternative based on Google money directly (Mozilla), nor Google money indirectly, in a form of Google code (AOSP). Whole Mozillas "AI necessity" I guess is just to feed Google AI for Google money.
@rysiek
Except the web isn't America, and browsers don't operate under first past the post. So I can go use someone besides chrome or Firefox. And I am.
@eldersea where, pray tell, did I say anything about this being about the USA (as I assume this is what you meant by "America" here)?
Same shit is happening with all sorts of centrist parties all over the place. In some of these places some of the elections might not operate under first-past-the-post either.
The point is, Mozilla thinks that they are "the only real alternative" to Chrome, much like centrist parties think they are such to alt-right.
@rysiek
You didn't, but it's where Mozilla is based and it's a very familiar political problem. Any parliamentary system shows another way, let alone ranked choice or star voting.
Centristes are functionally right wing when push comes to shove, and basically the antithesis to "don't comply in advance."
I very much agree with you, perhaps my wording was poor.
@alienghic
Unfortunately at the moment, even vanadium and cromite are both forked from chromium. Ironfox works as a hardened Firefox base if that's your jam. I'm hoping that Ladybird will be out soon as a proper alternative.
@rysiek
@rysiek I am using Firefox because ad block is a security feature, and for now we can still disable all AI in Firefox (though it requires checking about 7 different settings stay disabled at every update). I agree this is not sustainable for most people. But for me it's what I prefer to do.
With how much AI has been pushed into Android, how long do you think it will take for it to be pushed into Chrome too? And probably no way to disable.
We really need another browser that respects its users.
@skylark13 I never said I would switch to Chrome or one of its forks. In fact I said the opposite multiple times. There are Firefox forks, and I intend to explore that space instead.
We really need to *fund* another independent browser. I'd like to see more activity around Verso:
https://gitlab.com/verso-browser/verso
@rysiek Sorry I misinterpreted "why would anyone use Firefox over Chrome" as you saying people should use Chrome. I understand you were more saying people *would* use Chrome. Not necessarily by choice but because there are no good alternatives once you eliminate Firefox.
@skylark13 right. And Firefox is becoming less and less of an actual alternative. By choice, simply because Mozilla insists on chasing Chrome.
> new independent browser
@rysiek unfortunately I suspect this will have to go through us nerds getting our asses off of Fedi and on some committees that are currently busy putting complexity on the web purely to aide surveillance capitalism. I am open to ideas how. 
Wait! I have an example! I bet everyone always needed to define CSS functions! You know to... To?... Well because CSS was not Turing-complete enough! (and not to put barriers to non-google browsers!!)
https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/features/function/
@rysiek chrome broke ad-block.
@ajroach42 taking bets here when Mozilla breaks it as well.
Which is, I guess, when a truly independent hard-fork finally emerges.
I think that's the breaking point for a lot of people where they would stop using Firefox.
p.s. It's not just a tech nerd sort of thing, it's basic usability. Adverts are so intrusive now that it's quite hard to use the web without uBlock Origin etc. Things like YouTube are unwatchable. there are adverts longer than the clips they're attached to etc.
I know an older person that I set up a computer for with uBlock Origin, and they find it so much easier to browse the web now. I'm also a bit more confident they won't pick up random malware from adverts masquerading as errors or fake news items etc.
If Firefox blocks uBlock Origin and equivalents, a lot of people would be forced to move.
@FediThing @rysiek @ajroach42 The built-in programmatic ads on the new tab page are going to be intereresting -- https://www.adweek.com/media/mozilla-index-exchange-first-programmatic-partner/ (as far as I know you will be able to turn them off by switching the new tab page to blank)
@rysiek It's wild to me that there aren't more quality open source browser options...
@seigea it's an insanely complex and security-critical piece of software.
There is Verso that I am looking at with some hope, but I can't say it is moving fast:
https://gitlab.com/verso-browser/verso
Edit: Verso is not maintained because it's no longer needed. Check out: https://servo.org/
@rysiek The Verso web browser is not maintained because it's not needed anymore. Please read the note on the readme in the Github repo: https://github.com/versotile-org/verso
Instead you can follow @servo engine / web browser, which is in active development.
https://servo.org/
@davidgerard @seigea one can hope that new interest arises
@rysiek @davidgerard @seigea But also Verso the browser on their website is "coming soon" while their ML middleware has a website. So not super sold they even have the right priorities to be worth waiting for.
Verso was using servo as it's engine, and recently servo released a shell for their engine, so you can download and run servo.
Though there's a crash with recent versions of gstreamer
https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/34911
There's also stuff like epiphany, konqueror or falkon.
@rysiek@mstdn.social And the great alternative is... Google Chrome? lol
@rysiek Or, some of us will continue using forks as long as possible. It's been many years since i've used anything other than Librewolf as my daily driver.
@transicorn @rysiek what do you mean forks... Wasn't Firefox released late 2004? And iceweasel hit Debian late 2006? I can hardly call it a fork any longer lol.
What can't be denied is how consistent @mozillaofficial is at being on the wrong side of history with its ... "POLICIES"
@petko @rysiek @mozillaofficial Librewolf is clearly a fork.
Also, i get that everyone dislikes #AI and for good reason, but it's now also going to be acceptable for it to be used in development of the #linux kernel itself.
There are places where it works, and places where it's annoying and no one asked for it. Mozilla adding it to Firefox is obviously the latter of the two but AI overall is here to stay in some regards obviously.
@transicorn @petko @rysiek @mozillaofficial Maaaybe. So far nobody has figured any way to actually make money with it except through grift. That doesn't bode well for its future.
@petko well they are not independent projects, are they? As in, they do not develop independently of Firefox' codebase – as much as I would love that to be the case.
@rysiek, Pale Moon is being developed independently, I think. But I don't find their goal, which to me sounds like "let's preserve Firefox 4 forever" appealing.
@petko @transicorn
@rysiek, yeah was trying to make a joke how iceweasel has been an established name for almost as long as Firefox, completely thanks to @mozillaofficial's sage policies. // @transicorn
@petko fair enough, sorry I did not get it. Kinda in a "rage against the machine" mode right now. 
@rysiek @petko @mozillaofficial Same... i didn't get that take either but you're right. Mozilla has been making some unhappy for quite some time now.