I'm really not happy with the situation either... 🙁 Maybe a workaround would be looking at the code and find every single url/ip that FF is supposed to call and block them in a firewall... but that's both not very casual user friendly and time consuming because if it's efficient they would just have to regularly change subdomains or whatever to make things hard.
I actually like how Firefox has handled AI - small local models, no spying to train AI on my data. For users who insist on using a mainstream online chatbot, it lets them do it without forcing it on others. (And there are more such users than I thought. People who I thought are way too computer illiterate to use AI surprised me by using ChatGPT.)
Firefox lets me translate text locally without big tech spying on my translations. Is this bad because it happens to use neural networks?
To be fair, I could paint this one quickly because I only painted the fox and the parrot over a scene that I had already painted for Reddit when they had their API change controversy back in June 2023. The artwork is hosted somewhere in this directory: peppercarrot.com/en/artworks/m…
Official homepage of Pepper&Carrot, a free(libre) and open-source webcomic about Pepper, a young witch and her cat, Carrot. They live in a fantasy universe of potions, magic, and creatures.
Official homepage of Pepper&Carrot, a free(libre) and open-source webcomic about Pepper, a young witch and her cat, Carrot. They live in a fantasy universe of potions, magic, and creatures.
@FoxbrushTailwag Same here, and it makes it even more frustrating. I'm still using Firefox after a couple of months of using LibreWolf, which was educational because I could understand many of Firefox's privacy and options that LibreWolf activates by default.
I'm not sure so far. ML has valid applications, and so far what Mozilla has brought to the table seems very reasonable to me. Most important thing for me is that everything is local and privacy friendly. And the features they have are very reasonable: An alt-text generation model makes a lot of sense for people to whom alt-texts matter. And local translation of websites also sounds like a really nice feature. As far as I see such features will make the web more accessible with better privacy.
For me the most important things are:
1. ML should be local and not send arbitrary data to shady third party services 2. ML should be build to only affect performance when you actually need it 3. ML should provide specific tools, not general purpose blackboxes
Also 4. ML should be trained in a responisble way, which means: 1. Responsible source of training data 2. Resource use of training should be justified by the benefit of the functionality
I remember the time when ML was mosty an exciting University thing, where results were shared, and not some big corporation BS. I am not against going back in that direction.
But you know, digiKam has been using public models for facial recognition and matching for years now. And I don't think anything bad came from it.
I am currently in the position of saying: Wait and see what mozilla does. And if it turns out the wrong way, there are forks. That's the beauty of open source.
@lazy Plenty of good ML research going on at Unis. LLMs and Stable Diffusion are just a microscopic slice of ML and there is a lot of cool stuff you can do with the part that do not require you to steal all intellectual property in the world.
@j_bertolotti @lazy I totally agree, and although I often take shortcuts for the sake of efficient communication, my position on LLMs is nuanced.
What worries me the most is that 'AI browsers' have a larger scope by definition. If Firefox wants to join that group, it would also mean getting a built-in assistant that can browse the web automatically, fill in forms and purchase items on the user's behalf.
I know users will be able to turn it off, but I see it as a source of security breach.
Firefox is shooting itself in the foot with this. Most Firefox users are users of the browser because of privacy reasons and to escape the big brother tech.
Implementing ai in the browser is repulsing idea. Nobody want that. I believe sooner than later people are going to avoid AI in the most parts.
@vismantas Just the new CEO at Mozilla communicating enthusiastically about AI in general on Mozilla's blog for Firefox (eg. "It will evolve into a modern AI browser") src: blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/le…
They should have one of Zen browsers developers as Firefox CEO. Not a finance bro. Firefox should focus on only being a decent browser. They are a foundation, not a for profit corporation and need to act as so.
kitami_san
in reply to David Revoy • • •Neotheta
in reply to David Revoy • • •Dan Morris
in reply to David Revoy • • •Marco "Ocramius" Pivetta
in reply to David Revoy • • •posting this here, just because there's still hope: mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdev…
Firefox for Web Developers
2025-12-18 12:11:37
Ondrej Zizka
in reply to David Revoy • • •Le Gnou
in reply to David Revoy • • •:/
villon
in reply to David Revoy • • •DessiniFab
in reply to David Revoy • • •四
in reply to David Revoy • • •I lament that the fox you created is cute, gives it a juxtaposition.
But maybe it’s actually brilliant? After all, we want to save the fox, from itself.
Either way, I’m never paying for browser AI, and if that means ads/privacy invasions I’m out. Such a sad state of affairs. 🙁
iwein
in reply to David Revoy • • •Holger
in reply to David Revoy • • •social.vivaldi.net/@Vivaldi/11… #vivaldi
Vivaldi Browser
2025-12-16 10:22:24
Brent Guernsey, Artrocity Studio
in reply to David Revoy • • •Gynux
in reply to David Revoy • • •Maybe a workaround would be looking at the code and find every single url/ip that FF is supposed to call and block them in a firewall... but that's both not very casual user friendly and time consuming because if it's efficient they would just have to regularly change subdomains or whatever to make things hard.
jfml - Jonas Laugs
in reply to David Revoy • • •Neil Kandalgaonkar
in reply to David Revoy • • •Ronald vd W.
in reply to David Revoy • • •ɹ uɐp
in reply to David Revoy • • •Jorge Bejarano
in reply to David Revoy • • •Heliograph
in reply to David Revoy • • •Helena B
in reply to David Revoy • • •tekhedd
in reply to David Revoy • • •elgregor
in reply to David Revoy • • •I actually like how Firefox has handled AI - small local models, no spying to train AI on my data. For users who insist on using a mainstream online chatbot, it lets them do it without forcing it on others. (And there are more such users than I thought. People who I thought are way too computer illiterate to use AI surprised me by using ChatGPT.)
Firefox lets me translate text locally without big tech spying on my translations. Is this bad because it happens to use neural networks?
Dregntael
in reply to David Revoy • • •Thomas Sturm
in reply to David Revoy • • •sythys
in reply to David Revoy • • •custard
in reply to David Revoy • • •Yep. As a user since before it was Firefox, it’s totally disappointing.
And another in a long line decisions messing around with the frills while not dealing with the core product.
Proto Himbo Derpopean
in reply to David Revoy • • •adra
in reply to David Revoy • • •also perfectly accurate
David Revoy
in reply to adra • • •@adra Thank you! 💜
To be fair, I could paint this one quickly because I only painted the fox and the parrot over a scene that I had already painted for Reddit when they had their API change controversy back in June 2023. The artwork is hosted somewhere in this directory: peppercarrot.com/en/artworks/m…
Misc - Pepper&Carrot
Pepper&CarrotRokosun
in reply to David Revoy • • •@adra
I think I found it - peppercarrot.com/en/viewer/mis…
Misc - Pepper&Carrot
Pepper&CarrotPeter Hilgenfeld
in reply to Rokosun • • •🄯CarlOS
in reply to David Revoy • • •KevinFlynn
in reply to David Revoy • • •Em
in reply to David Revoy • • •Johann Sebastian Staedtler 🇨🇦
in reply to David Revoy • • •Sashin
in reply to David Revoy • • •BeEverCurious
in reply to David Revoy • • •Justin 🇻🇦
in reply to David Revoy • • •Didier
in reply to David Revoy • • •but there is nothing yet about AI.
Dave Rahardja
in reply to David Revoy • • •TrimTab 🇺🇦
in reply to David Revoy • • •Jess Fairbairn
in reply to David Revoy • • •Foxbrush Tailwag
in reply to David Revoy • • •oh no, poor fox ☹️ great work as always, though.
Unfortunately also very accurate, but won't get me to move to anything Chrome based, since imho a Browser engine monopoly would be even worse.
David Revoy
in reply to Foxbrush Tailwag • • •@FoxbrushTailwag Same here, and it makes it even more frustrating. I'm still using Firefox after a couple of months of using LibreWolf, which was educational because I could understand many of Firefox's privacy and options that LibreWolf activates by default.
ref: framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy/1140…
David Revoy
2025-03-01 18:44:22
Chris Cochrun ~ >
in reply to David Revoy • • •Ken Fallon (PA7KEN, G5KEN)
in reply to David Revoy • • •Cybird
in reply to David Revoy • • •Why's it got to be a robot bird?
#not-mad #great-art
David Revoy
in reply to Cybird • • •Paulo Delgado
in reply to David Revoy • • •Tina
in reply to David Revoy • • •I'm not sure so far. ML has valid applications, and so far what Mozilla has brought to the table seems very reasonable to me. Most important thing for me is that everything is local and privacy friendly. And the features they have are very reasonable: An alt-text generation model makes a lot of sense for people to whom alt-texts matter. And local translation of websites also sounds like a really nice feature. As far as I see such features will make the web more accessible with better privacy.
For me the most important things are:
1. ML should be local and not send arbitrary data to shady third party services
2. ML should be build to only affect performance when you actually need it
3. ML should provide specific tools, not general purpose blackboxes
Also
4. ML should be trained in a responisble way, which means:
1. Responsible source of training data
2. Resource use of training should be justified by the benefit of the functionality
I remember the time when ML was mosty an exciting University thing, where results were shared, and not some big corporation BS. I am not against going back in that direction.
But you know, digiKam has been using public models for facial recognition and matching for years now. And I don't think anything bad came from it.
I am currently in the position of saying: Wait and see what mozilla does. And if it turns out the wrong way, there are forks. That's the beauty of open source.
j_bertolotti
in reply to Tina • • •@lazy Plenty of good ML research going on at Unis. LLMs and Stable Diffusion are just a microscopic slice of ML and there is a lot of cool stuff you can do with the part that do not require you to steal all intellectual property in the world.
@davidrevoy
David Revoy
in reply to j_bertolotti • • •@j_bertolotti @lazy I totally agree, and although I often take shortcuts for the sake of efficient communication, my position on LLMs is nuanced.
What worries me the most is that 'AI browsers' have a larger scope by definition. If Firefox wants to join that group, it would also mean getting a built-in assistant that can browse the web automatically, fill in forms and purchase items on the user's behalf.
I know users will be able to turn it off, but I see it as a source of security breach.
Dimitar Stoev
in reply to David Revoy • • •Firefox is shooting itself in the foot with this. Most Firefox users are users of the browser because of privacy reasons and to escape the big brother tech.
Implementing ai in the browser is repulsing idea. Nobody want that. I believe sooner than later people are going to avoid AI in the most parts.
Thierry Philippe
in reply to David Revoy • • •Jérôme Herbinet | FLOSS
in reply to David Revoy • • •D34ALT
in reply to David Revoy • • •au
in reply to David Revoy • • •Hank G ☑️ likes this.
florent wehrli
in reply to David Revoy • • •Tous les firefox sont concernés?(esr, fennec)
Alcea
in reply to David Revoy • • •vismantas
in reply to David Revoy • • •David Revoy
in reply to vismantas • • •Mozilla’s next chapter: Building the world’s most trusted software company
Rebecca Smith (The Mozilla Blog)bhaugland
in reply to David Revoy • • •I moved to librewolf it’s feels faster and the ui for it feels like a traditional browser
I’m very happy with my choice
SkyLuke
in reply to David Revoy • • •