A Mozilla director of engineering:
https://mastodon.social/@stevemarshall/115740621035086166
> Are we building AI features? Yes, because lots of users are asking for them.
WHICH USERS STEVE
SHOW US THESE USERS
NOBODY ELSE AT MOZILLA SEEMS TO BE ABLE TO PRODUCE THEM
AND WE'VE BEEN ASKING A LOT
@davidgerard I admit, I like the on-device translation.
@davidgerard He obviously didn't see the DuckDuckGo survey which showed 90% of their users dont't want AI. It's being imposed on us rather than being based up consumer market research.
Slopzilla claims they are working for everybody but they keep announcing new AI slop features, but when it comes to major, exciting new Firefox features that aren't AI, they are totally silent.
@davidgerard for those morron and their AI cult 2 people asking is a lot of user.
Ans seeing their market share ... it's half of their user
@davidgerard Yeah, where on the bugzilla are people filing these?
@davidgerard (steamed hams voice) user polls! at this time of year! in this part of the country! localized entirely to our company intranet!
@davidgerard ....where by "users" we of course mean "dollars", um, I mean "donors".
Sorry, maybe I should have been more specific (except I'm being paid not to).
@davidgerard that reads like it should be made into a goose meme 😁 🪿
@davidgerard@circumstances.run what users want ai in firefox?
oh, you wouldn't know them, they go to another school
one could make the argument that the 1:2:7 ratio exists. One¹ very vocal user asking for AI, 2 not very vocal users asking for AI, and 7 users wanting AI and not saying anything. Fair to follow what they are saying. It's like when we see a big, we know it's affecting for more users, that just the users who speak up
However, we have hundreds of very vocal people saying they don't want AI, if double that aren't being very vocal and are voting on their polls that they don't want AI. Just imagine how big the silent majority are who don't want AI
The ratio of people not wanting AI is bigger than the people who want AI, especially when they count the silent majority in each group
One wonders why Mozilla is ignoring the actual numbers and plowing on…
¹ Number are illustrative and don't necessarily represent an accurate amount
@davidgerard I understand the answer is called Vivaldi.
WHICH USERS STEVE
SHOW US THESE USERS
Elon Musk Jeff Bezos the winging twit from microsoft who wants us all to love ai,
Thiel Peter Pedo nutter.
and other VIP`class users.
We ignored the other 98.99% who keep telling us they do not want Artificial Idiots.
Too many real ones around already.
@davidgerard those users as real as the proverbial Canadian girlfriend you just never met because, you know, she lives in Canada! 😂
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Canadian%20girlfriend
@davidgerard Ooft, lads, that "we don't believe in opt-in because we don't know what it means" thing is a death-knell. Proper jumping in with the techbro PUA creep crowd there.
I'd say that's a pretty solid litmus test for when an OSS project has passed the point of no-return under its current governance. The project may technically remain "open-source", but the point of it being open-source in the first place has been entirely defeated.
Don't need to bother inspecting the source for malware when they're proudly blogposting their way through admitting that they've given the entire company over to the purveyors of malware-in-a-guy-fawkes-mask.
When the entire notion of consent gets reframed so much that they've torn the picture, done a serial-killer magazine montage with the text from it and, oooh, whadya know, it comes out saying "i tHe UnDeRsInEd Do HeArBy gIvE cOnCeNt FoR [eVrYtHiNg]", the source licensing becomes irrelevant. It's radioactive either way. It's just a matter of time before you start losing fingers and toes to it.
@davidgerard "lots of users" = AI hype and business models
@davidgerard I'm also one of those users who appreciate the AI features in Firefox, like many others who raised their voice here. However, I also support Mozilla's move to let users disable AI features. That being said, there is certainly no need to attack people and get personal here. This isn't X.
@davidgerard Are we supposed to not ask why an 'opt-in' feature requires a killswitch?
@fuzzyfuzzyfungus these are the kind of guys who *literally* pretend not to understand what opting in is
@davidgerard We have add-ons, why do we need such features integrated?
@davidgerard if you look at all their social accounts, even the Mozilla AI one, and all their posts are very low engagement and when there is engagement it's mostly comments like "stop putting AI in stuff!"
@davidgerard Unfortunately our shareholders have requested to remain anonymous.
When they say "users" they mean the ones who use your data (remember when they started harvesting your browser activity?) for reasons... You know, like the NSA, DHS, IDF, MI6, etc.
@davidgerard Are these users Joe and Eileen Bailey?
@davidgerard I am one of them and I use those Firefox AI tool. I simply to not shout out loud about it.
@davidgerard Mozilla has conducted at least one user survey about AI features. The company should release its data to support its claim.
@davidgerard
"I see. And are those users in the room with us now?"
@davidgerard there's this discipline called product management and when some users ask for something, you just do it.
Never validate any feature request against considerations like cost-benefit analysis, interest from other users, whether it would make the product worse for more people than it makes better, any of the irrelevant stuff. Doesn't matter whether it relates to product goals at all either.
If it's a really expensive thing to implement and competitors are years ahead: even better.
@davidgerard It's that obnoxious swerve into formal logic where "all users hate 'AI'" is false, because "some users love 'AI'" is true, where "some" can be just one.
@foolishowl @davidgerard and it can also just be the ceo. dogfooding!!
@hipsterelectron @foolishowl eating our own dogshit
@davidgerard @hipsterelectron @foolishowl "Not only is eating dogshit nutritious, it is also invigorating!" - Firefox
Or, support a better plugin infrastructure that allows 3rd parties to add stuff.
If some 3rd party wants to enshittify with AI, let them.
Keep it out of the base software.
@davidgerard He just mixed up the word "user" with "customer". Just like their CEO before. As I tried to reflect on that fact earlier, here: https://mastodon.social/@chainq/115745585459795231
@davidgerard Lots of users asking for (A WAY TO DISABLE) AI features.
@davidgerard
Sounds more like that is from the director of marketing then from the director of engineering.
@davidgerard board members who want to firefox explicitly?
@davidgerard Most users are asking for AI features! I mean, they haven't been able to find all the individual opt out buttons we hid deep in the technical settings, that means they consent right?
@davidgerard
Apparently, they also know a whole lot of people who have a different definition of "opt-out" than the rest of us, so they're just keeping the AI features opt-in.
I don't know who these people are or why the Mozilla team's leadership knows so many of them that it warps their understanding of a basic concept, but I do know that I don't want to be alone in a room with them.
I’m standing in line for it.
I want everything I do in my browser to hog all my memory, record everything I do, and then be sent to random strangers so they can profit off of it.
No. Wait. Never mind.
@davidgerard the users are investors of Nvidia.
I can't seem to find these "mysterious" users either.
The only ones who seem really enthusiastic about AI is the fossil fuel industry & their tech kleptocrats. The money laundering is endless.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/technology/saudi-arabia-ai-exporter.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/29/gas-power-ai-climate
https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/
@davidgerard To be honest, if they say they receive that request from a lot of users I have no reason (nor do I care) to question it.
What I wonder is if they are also measuring how many they lose. I am biased but in my environment I have seen literally everyone (I was the one last standing) switching to any other browser.
Don't know, there is a good bunch of directors over there, I'm trusting they are smarter than I am.
@nilace I think there is reason to question it, though, because every actual survey or request for comments they do is relentlessly negative
it's philosophically possible the lurkers support them in email, but it's negligible as a claim
@davidgerard I agree, I'm just making room for the possibility that they are researching in areas I have no idea about. Or countries that are not present in the same environments I am.
To be fair, it hasn't been without pain and it's been a process, but I don't care anymore.
I've seen people asking even for what I think is a fair middle ground in line with what used to be their... thing (opt-in instead of opt-out) with no answer.
Several weeks ago I just said goodbye.
@davidgerard When "lots of users" equates to a few real users and then the CEO who represents a number of users much greater than 1 and the real users.
@davidgerard Lots of users inside of Mozilla!
@davidgerard it's possible that users are asking for features! unfortunately in 2026 if you attempt to deliver a feature by any method other than chatbot, you are immediately transfigured into a donkey.
