Mastodawn

All AI features will also be opt-in. I think there are some grey areas in what 'opt-in' means to different people (e.g. is a new toolbar button opt-in?), but the kill switch will absolutely remove all that stuff, and never show it in future. That's unambiguous.

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I'm not asking for faith in our direction - the thing I love about the Firefox community is how open, honest, and technical it is.

But I do ask that you don't have the opposite of faith. Like, try not to be determined that we're going to do the wrong thing here.

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I hope we can (re)gain your trust here.

I don't personally work on this stuff, but I'll try hard to answer any questions you have.

And other than that, I'll get back in my lane, and stick to web platform stuff.

- Jake (@jaffathecake)

Just be glad this thread wasn't a long-ass video. It almost was.

@firefoxwebdevs Yeah I think most people mainly deplore the hype and the resources spent on technological trends whose benefits are not always obvious. Before that, Mozilla advertised about FirefoxOS, before killing it to focus on IoT, before moving on to blockchain, then crypto, then NFT's and now IA. In more that 10 years, none of this projects produced anything useful for the users.

@firefoxwebdevs Right now, Mozilla would probably be the first company to be diagnosed with ADHD. It really can't seem to focus and do something productive. The question was never "should Firefox have IA?". The question is "to do what?". Mozilla is communicating that IA is coming. Not announcing a new feature. TBH, it's worrying. IA should be an implementation detail, not the central point.

@firefoxwebdevs It's like Mozilla is a car company and it's advertising a new car with leather in it. Ok, cool but what is it? A berline, a pickup, a SUV? Will I recharge with electricity or fuel? And Mozilla's answer is: "it has leather in it!"

It's… not great.

@christophehenry @firefoxwebdevs look, you have a point about communication. It's hard and Mozilla isn't top notch at it, to be polite. But also, Mozilla never worked on IOT, nor blockchain nor crypto stuff. There were vague talks of transitioning some of the Firefox OS resources into IOT exploration for a very brief time, which didn't end up happening so I'll give you that one. But where the hell hell is the rest coming from?

@christophehenry @firefoxwebdevs no NFT either. Obviously.

@nical I can't find the sources although I remember clearly something about it but they definitively developped a Metaverse thing and IoT. This doesn't really change my argument.

@christophehenry just to be clear, I've been working there for over a decade. I would know. Mozilla did not invest engineering resources into NFT, or crypto, not even IOT for all intents and purposes, although almost. You have a problem with VR? I don't blame you I don't think it's particularly interesting, but if a company decides to have a small team experiment with VR in case it becomes important, then maybe give them a break? The other 1000 employees are still working the usual stuff.

@christophehenry how many people will read your toot and think "oh, Mozilla was into NFT, that sucks, I guess I won't fact check, it's been written by someone on the internet, that must be true"? Mozilla is such an easy target with its frequent PR mess ups, could we focus on stuff that is actually real?

@nical I think you're missing my point entirely but it's ok. We don't have to agree.

abben

@christophehenry @nical I mean you just falsley listed like a half a dozen things and didn't acknowledge or correct. Why is that?