Firefox is becoming an AI browser and the internet is not at all happy about it

Why isn’t the framing “the user may choose to turn it ON”? Just chew on that.

  > If I can turn it off as they claim 

You can already do so with the current AI stuff and it is an open source browser so they couldn't stop you if they wanted to.

>Primarily because web search these days is so shitty but that’s besides the point.

Obviously there are a lot of reasons for this. But I think one of the most important reasons is that there is so few organic interesting content destinations anymore.

Sure there are some neat shopify stores, news sites, and a few dedicated souls keeping up blogs. But so much of the casual browsing that the web once was has been obliterated by the move to social media.

And what hasn't moved is now a mess of AI generated fluff or link farms.

I used to think Google made search worse to increase ad revenue. And maybe it's tangentially related. But the stuff I used to search for and find and get inspiration from has moved to walled gardens. Reddit is one of the few remaining open web destinations left.

AI can't solve that problem.

What's the use case of an ai chat built into the browser instead of just going to a web page that has it? I would think ai browser integration should be about automating it or something instead

Ads are coming to AI, too. At the risk of sounding like a shill, Kagi offers a better search experience than even Google back in the day.

And because of Googles search system, almost every result comes from a content farm or some other page that has "optimized for google search" i.e., filled their pages with so much pointless dreck that finding the information you came for becomes nearly impossible.

LLMs that are trained off of that dreck and give you the answer you were looking for sometimes, when they don't make it up.

And they've gotten to the point where they do so more quickly than trying to find it yourself in many cases, but I would much rather websites and search results being faithful stewards of the functions they are intended for and to get the information from the tap rather than having an AI butler deliver it to me.

Part of the issue is the search tech itself, but part of the issue is how the web has been warped by SEO. Search and what was being discovered weren’t always in such an adversarial relationship.

For me though the closest I can get to the good old days is Kagi. Not a sponsor.

To me it's a bit like when your favorite fancy restaurant stops making its own bread in-house. The change itself isn't huge, and isn't all that surprising… but it's not a great sign for how the place will look in a decade.

I think it was just one of those throwaway lines. I raised an eyebrow when I read it. It seems like something written to appease some idiot on the board or something. If I thought there was a strong vision there it would be fine, but no one seems to have any vision for AI beyond some controlled tech demos that never quite work as advertised—at least not enough for you to use it in the way advertised.

> Firefox still checks off the most boxes of what I want in a browser.

Same here, but lately it seems like Mozilla will stop at nothing to get me to stop using Firefox. At what point should I say enough is too much?

It's seen as cool to hate on AI right now. I haven't used Firefox in about 10 years, and this is definitely not a feature I would want, but if I were still using it I wouldn't get all exercised over it.

  > It felt like everyone overreacted

I seriously don't get it and I understand why there's conspiracies about disinformation campaigns. But on all places I don't understand how HN users are just happily giving the keys to the internet to a singular company, let along Google.

  > Firefox still checks off the most boxes of what I want in a browser.

Why are browsers even "sticky"? There's no social network. Bookmarks are trivial to migrate. It's like the easiest thing to switch out there...

>But I don't understand the huge backlash in all the comments yesterday.

Well, it was an excuse to get the pitchforks out! We love to do that around here. Especially if I can say "AI", "slop", "crypto", "MBA", etc.

Why replace Firefox? The headline and linked article don't seem to match reality at all. It's just a bunch of clickbait nonsense.

I’ve been using librewolf for a while and it’s fine. Hopefully ladybird gets there eventually.

Initially, I would wait and see what Debian does. They might not package the browser with the same defaults as Mozilla.

I would also guess that there will be alternative packages for Firefox if there are enough people interested. Tor Browser is a example of Firefox being packaged using different defaults and plugins. In theory one could take Tor Browser, remove Tor, and have a hardenized version of Firefox with saner defaults.

Waterfox.

To be honest, I think librewolf will gain traction with firefox continue their journey to enshitification.

This gets off topic of Firefox, but I don't see how any middleware can address your concern.

It is the very information you feed to the AI to get results that is in danger. No matter how you mask some metadata or account info, the actual in-band content is a problem.

The only solution is self-hosting of a model so the input and output cannot be monitored. And this also means running it offline, since a "black box" model that can do RAG or MCP or anything like that could also use covert channels to leak the information you are trying to control.

I’ve never understood why Firefox doesn’t just make an extension with first-party support, instead of bloating their browser with gimmicks that a large cohort of users don’t want, and that probably shouldn’t be included by default at this point anyway. Or, shit, they came up with “Focus” for a “privacy browser”, do that and leave Firefox alone. Better yet, implement any of the litany of fixes and features your users actually requested.