📣 Post by tante

RE: mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdev…

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I like that Firefox is (through @jaffathecake) communicating. But the point is not really if you can disable the features TBH.

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I think the problem is how Firefox/Mozilla is perceived: Putting a whole lot of resources into AI gambles (that the community does not seem to be too thrilled about to say the least) while seemingly losing all focus on the Open Web as something to work on, strengthen and defend. Especially with Google/Chrome's dominance.

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The new CEO coming in and just hammering "AI" while never talking about how exactly those systems can only exist by harming the open web is a bad sign.

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It's not so much about distrust of the engineers working on Firefox and them adding a switch or not. It's about a communicated vision that seemingly pushes aside all the things people want Firefox to exist for.

💬 Replies

@tante

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That feature NEEDS to be easy to find, easy to use and once switched to OFF stays OFF until the user opts to turn back on.

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@tante @jaffathecake

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I keep thinking that the powers that be are missing an opportunity. If they'd taken the opportunity to brand Firefox as "AI-Free!", and stuck to it, they'd have a lot of […]

@tante @jaffathecake They also betray their values by adding they features first, and then reluctantly agreeing much later that maybe they should eventually give users control over those […]

@tante @jaffathecake

They still haven't followed their users' comments, which is to make everything opt-in, not opt-out. I'm on the feed on mozilla's own group for this. Nobody wants this. […]

@tante @jaffathecake

What ever is added that isn't just browsing, should be OFF by default.

DoH

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@tante @jaffathecake I mean there's some aspect as well which is just that if you ship this stuff without going through an opt-in flow that's just tremendously user hostile for absolutely no […]

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