This is like when people defend Windows 11's nonsense by saying "you can disable or remove that stuff". Yes, you can. But you shouldn't have to, and I personally prefer to use tools which don't shove useless things into the tool because it's trendy.

not to mention firefox routinely blows up any policies you set during upgrades, incompatibilities, and an endless about:config that is more opaque than a hunk of room temperature lard.

If you listen to the doomers in this thread, it will.

They "will" remove the option from settings, hide it in about:config, then later on remove it from there!

Of course none of that is true...

They already have hidden these in about:config!

Right click anywhere, (ask an AI chatbot) right there. Go to settings, search AI or search Chatbot, nothing.

It's plausible because the team working on the settings screen will be reassigned to the "AI".

That's just doom saying at this point.

Mozilla hasn't had the benefit of the doubt for quite a while here. This isn't just one small kerfuffle coming out of nowhere.

They say trust takes a lifetime to build and seconds to break ". We're years into it at this point.

This is not a thread comparing Mozilla to Google. This is a thread where we worry about how a non google browsing alternative stays alive. Of course none of us posting here trusts Google.

> we worry about how a non google browsing alternative stays alive

> This is just FUD. Ublock Origin is still working and will be working. Full customization is still there and isn't going away.

> This is just FUD. Ublock Origin is still working

Correct.

> and will be working.

How do you know?

> Full customization is still there

Correct.

> and isn't going away.

How do you know?

How do you know this new "AI" CEO won't let both support for Manifest V2 and extensive settings rot because "AI can do it for you" for example?

Or as I said earlier, because they'll run out of money to pay for non "AI" features?

> How do you know?

Extrapolation. Also, because it's FLOSS and can be modified by anyone.

If you need to compare yourself to the literal devil then you're probably far from a saint yourself.

So what's the solution? Stay with the devil?

Bad defaults are bad defaults, and "you can turn them off" is not a good excuse for bad defaults continuing to be bad defaults

It is the default in every major browser at this point.

https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/#GenAiDefaultSettin...

Bad defaults are bad defaults, and "our competitor does the same thing" is not a good excuse for bad defaults continuing to be bad defaults

And Mozilla copying what every other browser (read: Chrome) does is exactly why thy no longer have any relevant market share.

Easy for who? 99% of people are not going/able to setup firefox policies.

Even if we ignore things like "they're chasing AI fads instead of better things" and "they're adding attack surface" and so forth, and just focus on the disabling feature toggles thing...

... Mozilla has re-enabled AI-related toggles that people have disabled. (I've heard this from others and observed it myself.) They also keep adding new ones that aren't controlled by a master switch. They're getting pretty user-hostile.

Is it really in all 4 of those places? Just need to change it in the first two, right? I hate the new AI tab feature and wish they had a non-AI option.

You can disable the one option. I included links to the source code to show the level of preferences you can customize, and how it is processed.

They absolutely know people want that, and absolutely aren't going to add it.

There are already user-facing preferences for all of the AI features currently in Firefox. Some of them you don’t even have to go into Settings for, just right-click > Remove AI chatbot. They’re annoying, but I appreciate that they still need to be explicitly approved by the user to be enabled (for now).

I'm aware of the settings. I've toggled them. I'm suggesting a convenient global "AI off" toggle won't be provided.