AI is like human genitalia. I only like it when I’m in the mood for it, and I don’t want it shoved in my face at any other time.
chef’s kiss
They’re not perfect, but having a real alternative engine matters more than people realize.
Then use Waterfox.
I swapped for librewolf and enjoy all my shit still there. With ungoogled chromium for those sites that has some insane reason for the site breaking down when you look at it with anything but a missionary get. Trying helium too but yeah my Firefox is customized out the wazoo
free bottom surgery :3
LibreWolf looks good these days.
As there seems to have been recent confusion about this, just a quick “official” toot to then pin: we haven’t and won’t support “generative AI” related stuff in LibreWolf. If you see some features like that (like Perplexity search recently, or the link preview feature now) it is solely because it “slipped through”. As soon as we become aware of something like this / it gets reported to us, we will remove/disable it ASAP.
Can it sync my password and history from Mozilla’s servers? I’d switch in a heartbeat.
Yep. Is basically a firefox stripped from junk. Just remember is very stick on privacy, if something is not visible or some pics don’t upload, you just have to enable the site permission from the icon in the navigation bar.
That’s excellent! I’ll have to investigate how to make work with profiles-sync-daemon on my system. Then it’s a definite conclusion! Thank you.
Well, I still haven’t seen any AI in my Firefox and I’m planing on using it until I will.
Hold your click for at least one second on any link and it will show a preview of the link and suggest you to use AI to describe it
I genuinely thought you said “hold your dick for at least one second”
Time to pull out a hammer
STOP! HAMMER TIME!
Can’t touch this.
Haha 😄 funny you.
Settings > scroll down to “General” > look at the options under “Enable link previews”. You can turn the previews off altogether or just turn off the AI part
This is a defence only until it isn’t - although thank you for the tip.
That’s how Windows has been going for years - adding more and more crap and make it all default enabled, and people are like “Oh just turn it off bro.”
Then every update adds more unwanted options that get increasingly difficult to turn off, or randomly turn themselves back on, and before you know it we’ve reached a point where every new install soon needs an entire checklist to go through to make things actually usable again.
That is not how life should be. I want something that respects me by default, and if it wants me to try a feature I might find even slightly objectional, I should have to explicitly opt-in and say YES.
Firefox is setting a precedent by moving in this direction, and they’ve showed their hand. There’s only more where this came from, and I won’t tolerate it, even if I can turn it off.
When the Firefox terms and conditions drama happened some months back, that was the push I needed to switch to Librewolf. It’s a Firefox fork with privacy-respecting settings out of the gate, no sponsored content, no ads, uBlock pre-installed, and absolutely zero AI. If you’re a Firefox user, I recommend you try it too.
In my opinion this is one of the main issues. All those features should be disabled by default, and only the user decide if they want to enable them!
But they are doing the opposite.
Yeah, you can also opt out of your planet being demolished to build the intergalactic highway, the form is in the basement.
Incidentally, most of the new llm bullshits are on by default and can’t be turn off in the settings, you need to go to about:config and search for .ml to do so (not to be confused with .ml instance of lemmy which you also can’t easily opt out of). Obviously this settings aren’t synchronised between instances by “synchronise all settings” thingy which they need my personal info for, why would it, so you need to do it every time. Also also they sometimes revert back with major updates, because obviously they are.Thanks I already did that, but it still ticks me off that I had to find out they added this while using the browser. This shit should be off by default.
So it’s entirely optional, you only encounter it by interacting with the browser in an atypical way, and the thing it does is a thing that AI is actually pretty decent at (summarizing text)? Sounds like they couldn’t stop themselves from joining the dick hammering bandwagon, but decided not to hit it too hard.
This isn’t my wheelhouse so take it with a grain of salt, but an argument against link summarizers that I’ve heard is that it takes views away from websites that could be generating revenue for themselves. Instead an LLM scraped their content and fed a summary directly to the user.
Do people making that argument also find ad blockers even ten percent as horrible as this? They both ultimately have the same effect, which is your web browser not maximizing someone else’s profits by denying them a revenue opportunity.
I’d be curious if the link summarizer in Firefox runs a model locally or calls some remote API. Most current machines ought to be able to run an appropriate LLM model for that task.
That’s a good question. I’d personally argue that it’s different in that the adblockers are not an inbuilt part of Firefox, they’re made by extension developers. This is built right into the browser.
It’s more of a concern with google summaries that show up at the top of search results because it completely removes the need to click on any of the websites it pulls from. Ideally a link summary just lets you figure out which link you need without clicking on and looking at each one.
Thanks for adding that detail, makes sense. I was thinking the link previews were yeah more like the google results. Hover over and not have to go to the site.
entirely optional
No, it’s on by default, it has access to everything you’re browsing and doing fuck knows what with it, and you need to know that it is doing it and unless you’ve read it somewhere you don’t know that it’s there.
thing that AI is actually pretty decent at (summarizing text)
That’s so not true it’s not even funny.
I mean yeah, it could be worse, everything could be worse. Still, not good, not good at all.
you only encounter it by interacting with the browser in an atypical way
Leaving my pointer on a random place that happens to be a link is atypical? I don’t think it is. I had this pop up to me a couple of days ago and I didn’t even understand what could’ve triggered it, I was wondering if I clicked something or pressed a key unconsciously.
and the thing it does is a thing that AI is actually pretty decent at (summarizing text)
Pretty decent? Just passable, if the text is about some run-of-the-mill topic.
Doesn’t do that for me. I have to hold left click on a link for over a second to trigger it.
And yeah, pretty decent. It can produce a basically summary of a fair amount of text pretty quickly and generally accurately. It’s not an expert wordsmith, it won’t give a deep and thoughtful analysis of the poem you pointed it at or anything, but that’s not the use case. The use case is “give me the key bullet points of this article so I can decide if I should give it more attention.”, and it does that job pretty well.
generally accurately
This is absolutely, demonstrably, documentedly not true. It is accurate sometimes, and sometimes it shows you absolute bullshit. When will it be accurate? Who knows. So you can use it only when you don’t care about the truth, in which case why even bother, just imagine the article said what you wanted it to say and be done with it
Depends on model tuning. Basically, you can tune a model to hallucinate less, or to write more human-like, but not really both at the same time, at least not for a model you could expect most users to run locally. For this sort of application (summarizing text), you’d tune heavily against hallucination, because ideally your bullet points are going to mostly be made up of direct paraphrase of article text, with a very limited need for fluid writing or anything even vaguely creative.
Basically, you can tune a model to hallucinate less
You can tune it to hallucinate more, you can’t tune it to not hallucinate at all, and that’s what matters. You need it to be “not at all” if you want it to be useful, otherwise you can never be sure that it’s not lying, and you can’t check for lies other than reading the article, which defies the whole purpose of it.
Doesn’t do that for me. I have to hold left click on a link for over a second to trigger it.
I misunderstood the previous comments, actually, yeah, it’s not triggered the way I assumed.
The use case is “give me the key bullet points of this article so I can decide if I should give it more attention.”, and it does that job pretty well.
I’ll put aside all the other complaints I have on my mind, because we’ve both probably gone through similar discussions, I don’t want to get bogged down in yet another, and just say that I honestly can’t imagine this being such a useful or time-saving thing in the first place. Like, did it use to be a frequent problem to you to start reading an article, realise you’re not interested, and give up on it?
*yet
The new CEO is an AI True Believer, and I don’t doubt this will last.
They’ll remove the options to turn it off, and make it full of the AI features, with no opt-out or opt-in
Holding my click on a volume slider triggered the feature so it quickly became really annoying
Solution:
about:config > browser.ml.enable = falseGood I learnt something today. 😏
It doesn’t.
Installed Firefox from the Mint repos. It does.*
*Source: Me, just tried it.
Well, mine doesn’t. I’m not going to search how to enable it. I will just keep using the best browser there is and donating to Servo.
It does if you have a default install
There are a bunch of flags in
about:configyou can check as well, if you wanna be extra sure they’re turned off. Just search forbrowser.ml. There are more but this was all I could capture in one screenshot. Bold means I had to change it, which means it was on by default. That said I’m using CachyOS repos, not the direct Arch ones.
You only need to set
browser.ml.enabletofalse.Why use 1 hammer with 50 hammers will do the job even better!
Because these flags might be edited, or more might be added. Keep it simple.
Fair enough.
The article does say that we should always be able to turn off the AI part.
Arch Linux package maintainers seem to have disabled it by default unless I did something and forgot
Save us
LadybirdServo, you’re our only hope.Too bad it’s made by someone who promotes ‘great replacement’ theory and stands with fascists.
Since the comment you were responding to was edited to strike out “Ladybird” and write “Servo” instead, would you mind editing your comment to clarify you are talking about Ladybird and not Servo?
So what alternative do you suggest?
Zen Browser, open source Firefox fork
Just got it on play store, there’s an ad everytime I open it?
Holy hell. I knew about the gender neutral pronouns debacle. Didn’t know there are more…
Are we supposed to only use products and services from people whom we agree with completely on their full set of personal beliefs?
No, but why get behind a fascist sympathiser when a better project exists: servo.org.
Moving to a technically better project is a no brainer
This is a pretty gnarly one to just ignore.
Yeah, great replacement isnt an “Oh well, let’s just agree to disagree” type of thing.
I hate to be the one to tell you this. If you mostly agree with a fascist, maybe that’s a sign of something. And yes, shaming fascists is in fact, a good thing.
Just a bit of fascism, as a treat?
I have this person tagged as a fascist so…this tracks
Mobile app? I don’t see a tag option on my desktop. I’m pretty sure I used to tag people a lot when I used that other site.
When it concerns fascism? How the fuck do you even dare to ask that question?
Yes. I can and I will. You cannot stop me, I am mad with power.
Your comment got me thinking deeply 😮😮😮
Lemmy isn’t much better.
Edit: If people don’t know what I’m referring to, this comment sums it up well.
But on Lemmy I can block the devs and all of .ml
That’s user choice baby
There is the part where moderation tools seem almost intentionally left out. This place is almost as open to manipulation as 4chan.
Remember when 4chan used to be progressive, libertarian, (uh, and racist)?
Rememver when 4chan used to be progressive
If it ever was, it had to have happened sometime in the middle of its existence, cuz it sure as hell wasn’t that when it launched and sure as hell isn’t that now.
It was before and during the time of “Anonymous the Hacker known as 4chan”.
And yeah, my point was that it was easy to manipulate into being a far-right Nazi hellhole, instead of, you know, a more progressive (but still racist) and libertarian hellhole.
Kind of was progressive, issue is that Moot thought it was a good idea to give the nazis their own place, where they begun radicalizing each other, and even planned harassment campaigns.
And even then, a lot of “4chan progressives” only learned the concept of harassment campaigns, which they turned into what many call “cancel culture”. I’m not saying that all callouts are bad, but often people don’t want to resolve it in private, the “resolve it in private” for the callouter means the other ceases all online presence after a dox threat in private, or at worst it’s being used to get rid of an annoying creator they hated. Often all with the old 4chan-style “you can lie a little bit or more as long as you manage to control the narrative” mentality. Not to mention that the right figured out they can manipulate leftists into toxic callout campaigns.
Also if you ever seen a person saying “why don’t we give a shitton of antidepressants for gender dysphoria instead of hormones?”, that was either a former 4chan progressive, or was influenced by one, since a lot of people who became “mental health positive” due to Project Chanology usually did in a very performative opposition to Scientology’s anti-psychiatry.
Alternative and progressive used to be more synonymous
And I’m pro-choice!
-creates new account and then blocks own primary-
I’m actually not sure what you’re trying to say tbh. Sorry I’m dumb.
You’re not dumb, I made a bad joke. I could explain the joke over a few paragraphs, but it still won’t be funny. In fact, you’d hate it more for having to read that context. Suffice to say, my ADHD internal dialog jumped from idea to idea until I vomited out something that made me chuckle in the moment.
Sorry, your confusion was collateral damage from my mental explosion.
lol no you’re good
Go grab some adhd meds, my treat
On Ladybird, you can block yourself from supporting the devs
This is whataboutery.
Multiple things can be shitty at the same time though…
Everything is shitty, just different shades. 50 shades of shit.
How? You’re denigrating a product made by a fascist on a product made by a fascist.
One of the reasons I switched to a PieFed server. I’ve been happy with the switch though, it feels generally smoother in my browser as well. That’s the beauty of the Fediverse. Even on a whole different platform, I’m still able to participate in this discussion hosted on a Lemmy server.
What are you talking about? Any links?
I’m not disagreeing, I just haven’t heard this about Lemmy yet
.ml is a tankie instance. The main Lemmy dev is an admin on there, and is definitely a tankie.
His username is also a fascist dictator, iirc.
Eh, it’s more complicated, it’s a Haitian revolutionary and the first emperor of Haiti post-revolution. (Functionally a dictatorship)
He killed most of the remaining colonists, enforced plantation labor, and was overthrown after like 2-3 years, but a lot of haiti now remembers him mostly for abolishing slavery and there’s a lot of revisionism or justification for his worse acts.
So like its hard to know what someone who likes him knows / thinks about him.
“abolished slavery”, “enforced plantation labor”
uh… this really sounds like one of those “pick one” moments.
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works is a good resource
What about Servo?
Any good browsers that use it available yet?
still mozilla
edit: I get it, stop replying
Not since 2020 when Mozilla laid them off. They are now with the Linux Foundation Europe and they accept donations.
Nope, Mozilla gave up on Servo in 2020. It‘s now governed by the Linux Foundation Europe.
Servo hasn’t had anything to do with mozilla for five years
You can’t tell me what to do :3
Just disable the feature or use one of the great Firefox forks like Librewolf or Waterfox. Maybe even Iceweasel.
The world has really gone to shit if the cryptobrowser is our only hope
Waterfox it is.
Long ago, the Four Fox Nations lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the Firefox Nation attacked.
A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new developer, a script kiddy named Aang. And although his python skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he’s ready to save anyone. But I believe Aang can save the world.
Given python is air what are water, ice, blood, fire, lightning, combustion, earth, metal, and energy?
Ok, let’s do this:
Air = Python Water = Javascript Ice = Typescript Fire = Java Lightning = Groovy Combustion = Kotlin Earth = C++ Metal = Rust Spirit = Assembly
Haven’t heard of this before 😮
I just got Waterfox this morning. Pretty dope
there is a mobile waterfox too now
Does it have ublock?
It has browser extensions, and you can install uBlock through that, so yes
It’s the only browser I have on my phone, it works beautifully.
Waterfox is Firefox.
Its a fork and they can choose to include the changes they want from upstream. They’ve come out and said they’re not adding this AI bullshit. Librewolf has done the same.
So yes, base is firefox, but it’s not actually Firefox, in the same way edge uses chrome as its base (not exactly, but similar)
in the same way edge uses chrome as its base
It is much different than this. Edge is built on the Chromium engine, but that’s it. Waterfox is Firefox, as it’s shipped by Mozilla, only with some theme changes and flags disabled.
Oh, I had thought they had some control of upstream merges if its a fork. Couldn’t they choose not to include the upstream AI nonsense merges?
The code for AI is still included, it’s simply disabled.
I’m holding out for EarthFox
It’s a fork of Firefox.
It is a set of patches on top of Firefox.
That’s why I use Internet Explorer 7
Me too
What’s wrong with IE11?
“Firefox is evolving into an agentic browser, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere. Join us at #MozillaIgnite to see how frontier firms are transforming with Firefox and what’s next for the platform. We can’t wait to show you!”
#MozillaIgnite
Do you think this is a cry for help?
Here’s a complementary can of gasoline and blowtorch. It would be a shame if something happened to spill the gasoline on me. And then light the blowtorch. A real shame.
Ugh, even the corporate false chipper voice.
Librewolf is great. Pretty much the same as Firefox without the shit.
Yeah but its a soft fork, inherently dependent on mozilla.
Mozilla is circling the drain, determined to drive away the last of its users.
Who cares if it’s a soft fork as long as it’s open source? The point is to keep the fork clean and if Mozilla fails, the community can just take it over.
Not really.
Mozilla spends many millions a year on devs for their browser.
If they stop doing that, LibreWolf won’t have any patches or updates.
The community is t going to take over from mozilla.
I’m not saying it would be easy, but that’s the whole point behind open source. We’d have to at least try.
“the community taking over” is not the whole point behind open source.
There’s plenty of open source projects that need 100s of developers with niche credentials and experience to maintain.
If mozilla dies, and that’s the current trajectory, then ladybug or similar will be our refuge.
Yes, “the community taking over” is the entire ideology behind open source. Thats what it means. Anyone can develop it. It doesn’t mean that it needs to happen, just that part of the freedom you have is to do so. You’re conflating the two.
Librewolf is just a set of patches on top of Firefox.
There are no developers.I know what it is, I was just saying that the community would take over Firefox if need be.
How do you think the “community” would undertake such effort?
Dunno how pale moon is doing nowadays, but forks either follow the bigger principles of the base project or wither into obscureness if the base project changes underlying technologies.
What’s the migration process like?
Pretty much transparent.
Yeah I’m switch off Firefox finally. I tried Floorp it does have some the same AI stuff you have to turn off. Waterfox doesn’t have it in at all. So Waterfox it is.
For future readers, yes, Floorp is a real browser
Honestly the way they (by default) change home tab background for each visit is absolutely adorable.
All my 'puters have Water, Wolf, and Floo.
Waterfox is my favorite for sure, very lightweight too.
Discord doesn’t like it when it comes to voice-chat in the Android app, sadly (even though I know we should all leave Discord, but Revolt and Matrix can barely hold candles to the flame of its incredibly sophisticated streaming system), but yes, I’ve been on Waterfox for some time now.
You are absolutely right ✅
Floorp
I don’t think I will ever be able to pass past this name. It’s a name of something that sci-fi comedic cartoon will create for a passing joke.
Feels like ‘plumbus’
I actually use floorp. It’s literally the most customizable Firefox fork. It’s the only Firefox fork that allows me to have my tab bar exactly correct the way I want it.
But yeah name’s stupid. I kind of love it though. It’s so non-serious
It’s also a good verb. “I’ll floorp it later”. “Send me the link, I’ll floorp it to myself”.
Does it support profiles? If so, I’ll give it a floorp, just to see how it floorps.I’m still not convinced that name isn’t an elaborate joke. Like I could download the browser and be typing this comment on it and still think “man, they went all-in on this prank”
I could never not use zen or the similar browsers
Looks nice but how’s the ad blocking performance? I’m currently using Librewolf with ublock origin and a pi-hole and I basically never see ads anymore
I just use uBlock Origin with Zen and I never see ads. Not sure if it works on Youtube or any other streaming sites as I do not use any of them.
ublock does work nicely in YouTube, never had any problems BTW I use Orion
Woow! Really.
you’ll have about the same experience with zen+ublock, all told. obviously there’s more advanced privacy features you’ll lose, but your advertising experience will be about the same, nearly if not identical
Wow 👏
I know I’m gonna get a lot of flack for suggesting this, but Vivaldi feels like what Firefox should have been. More customizability, less AI and sponsored crap. They are the only major browser offering an option for a small, reasonably sized tab bar rather than the tab bars with 3 layers of padding and more whitespace than text.
Additionally, Vivaldi doesn’t pester you with twice-a-day update pop-ups or worse, the dreaded “Restart to keep using Firefox,” it just gets out of your way like a good browser should.
Vivaldi is not open-source, so it shouldn’t even be considered as an option. Try !waterfox@programming.dev!
Yup go Waterfox. Truely open and a fork of Firefox. It’s the best we have unfortunately.
How does it stack up against librewolf?
But it isn’t truly open though is it? I thought it was owned by a company.
Is it chromium? If yes than pass. Did everyone forgot when Google tried to use chromium to take control with this bullshit?
On the other hand they literally built an email client into their web browser. I don’t think they’ve met scope creep they didn’t like.
I think floorp and zen are trying to be the Vivaldi of Firefox but with less…stuff.
Netscape 3 with integrated mail and news is still the best internet experience that’s ever been conceived or designed or implemented. Communicator screwed it all up less than a year later but it was the best while it lasted.
Fast forward nearly 30 years and pretty much everyone uses webmail, so building a web-based client into your browser to poorly interact with an existing web-based service seems questionable.
If I want something to do a shit job accessing Gmail’s shitty non-standard service, I can always let thunderbird do a shit job.
Just because you force yourself to use Gmail, it doesn’t mean that Thunderbird is shit for others.
Nobody ever said it was
I tried it before, it was buggy and my tabs locked up. Also since its based on chrome, its very nerfed when it comes to powerful plugins. I didnt like it. My first impression was positive but no, it feels very bloated.
But if you like it and you feel its better than Firefox for you, thats a good thing.
Waterfox
Good, good💯
Vivaldi is by far the best browser out there. Its customizability and tab handling is second to none. Anyone not giving it a spin are missing out. Yes, their UI is proprietary, but out of all the things to be concerned about, this aint it. They are based in Norway and made by software engineers who worked on Opera browser who out of principle just wants a good browser which is not in corporate hell.
Seriously give it a try.
If i cant use uBlock origin on a browser, it cant be my primaryb browser.
Vivaldi is by far the best browser out there
Maybe among the wheelchair bound browsers that don’t let you properly block ads.
I stopped using Opera more 15 years ago, shortly before they dropped their own engine.
I did like their customisation options, 20+ years ago they were the only browser supporting mouse gestures too.
But I see no reason why would I want to use what’s basically chromium, especially bcs of ad blocking.
Y’all just live with ads? (I don’t think sinkholes catch everything.)Additionally I do not want to support proprietary code if I don’t have to.
i use vivaldi as well. seriously!
I can’t contain my excitement for the new modern AI browser, Microzilla Firepilot (stolen from phoronix). Best of all, every AI functionality is opt-out, so you don’t have to waste time turning them all on.
Google’s browser will be left in the dust!!!
Now that is innovation. Good job, new Firefox CEO.
