Firefox for Web DevelopersAI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
Duke of Germany 💫What Mozilla did: ⬆️
What the users actually wanted: ⬇️
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@duke_of_germany/115853330852766984
Jake ArchibaldRegarding "[...] I'm not personally in a position to action results of such a poll":
Are you in the position to bring up the results of such a poll in a meeting with your team & boss?
And if so, did you?
@duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs they're aware of the sentiment. I'm sure you're aware that Mastodon has a high representation of folks who don't like AI, so presenting evidence that Mastodon users don't like AI is kinda… well… not really useful.
No, Jake, I am not aware of this, and I do not believe this to be true.
Mastodon users might be special in the way they articulate their opinion, but by no means does this represent a fringe notion.
See for example the links in the reply of @jonny, or the ongoing AI-vote by DuckDuckGo: https://voteyesornoai.com/.
Ask an arbitrary group of people head on if they want genAI directly built into their software, and they will overwhelmingly say "no".
Stop portraying Mastodon users as the "anti-AI crazies".
Instead, ask yourself: "What is the relation between Mastodon users & Firefox?"
The answer:
An overwhelming number of Mastodon users used to be your champions.
They are tech people who used to recommend Firefox to the normies in their life. A crowd of mini-influencers, recommending your product.
And I don't understand why you go out of your way to alienate exactly these people.
@duke_of_germany @jonny @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard you've put "anti-AI crazies" in quotes so I assume you're quoting me. Can you point to where I said that? Or are you trying to mislead people?
@duke_of_germany @jonny @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard I deliberately polled folks here because of the audience type. I wouldn't have done that if I considered their views 'crazy' as you put it.
Please get your words out of my mouth.
Ah, ok, this is the route you take. Of course. I should have know, my bad.
Can't believe I have to tell this to an adult on the internet, but quotation marks (despite their name) have countless uses other than quoting people, for example to highlight slang terms or sarcasm.
And, Jake, seriously:
This is your main takeaway from the message?
You honestly see this as a good use of your time?
@duke_of_germany @jonny @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard mate you directly said I was portraying people here as crazies. I see why you'd want to try and wriggle out of that, but your message is right there.
To make one thing clear: I am not your mate, Jake.
By now, I am just a guy wondering what you are trying to achieve here, using both your work- and private account, working hard to alienate ex-Firefox-fans.
If this is your actual job: I feel sorry for you. Honestly. No sarcasm.
If not: for the love of god, go outside, touch grass, pet a dog, call a loved one.
Do literally *anything* except for whatever it is you are doing here. For your own sake.
@duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard ok, you've done everything you can to avoid addressing your attempt to put words in my mouth. Maybe that's just your general personality, but I'm glad the people around me are not so openly malicious.
@duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard to be clear: I do not consider people here to be crazy. Those are your words. You chose to use those words.
I got involved in this project because of the feedback I received here, and that feedback helped me make a change (https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115859958902197087).
Yes, this is a section of the user-base, one that isn't identical to the whole user-base. You may choose words like 'crazy' to describe them, but I absolutely reject your framing.
David Gerard@jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs rarely seen a man so unable to read and understand text
@jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs fabulous attempt at DARVO in corporate comms Jake, well done
Ronan@jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard forget AI, at this point Jake is putting me off Firefox
sotolf@ronanmcd @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard
Yeah, if anything the interactions I've had with firefox repersentatives here have solidified me in never jumping back on to firefox.
WachoperroJake made me install librewolf, it only took me 30 minutes and only because i got distracted trying to copy my data without firefox sync
(I tried to install my own sync server but the repo looks like a disaster. It was easier to activate sync, move the data, then disable it. Its E2EE but it was more a matter of principle, but i didn't have enough free time to waste in a tool that HAS ALWAYS WORKED **FINE** AS IS)
George Liquor, American@jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard You're really not helping yourself or Mozilla with this stuff, Jake. We're never going to see you as someone's victim when you're so set on avoiding the *real* issue that literally everyone is calling out to you. You don't get a medal for seeking feedback if you then ignore that feedback and openly disdain the users who provided it. Bogus shit.
@jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard In case my feedback isn't clear, here's how your responses are (correctly) received here:
Richard Grant@liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard
What Jake has done here — perhaps this was his goal — is change the topic of the discussion from "Does AI belong in Firefox?" to an increasingly recondite and trivial row over who said what and why are they acting this way. I guess one might call this artful deflection. But it actually looks like somebody ducking the hard question. "Naa naa naa, I can't hear you!" crowed Jake's subconscious. Verbatim.
Greg Burrell 
🦞🚴🥔@richardgrant @liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard The way that I interpret this discussion with Jake, even if it was not Jake who was personally involved, is that:
- Mozilla was always going to plow ahead with AI anyway
- Mozilla knew that Mastodon represented its largest group of its most enthusiastic supporters and promoters, and that this group is traditionally against AI creep
- They sent someone into this community feigning to solicit feedback in an effort to manufacture consent
- This failed predictably and spectacularly, and that hurt the representative's fee fees
- Now that Mozilla has, through naught but their own actions, completely alienated this community, they can claim that WE don't support THEM (c.f. Jake's false victim complex) and can claim moral high ground doing the thing they were so obviously going to do anyway.
So anyway, I've been a vocal supporter of Mozilla and its predecessors since the days of Netscape Navigator. A week ago I installed Vivaldi, and don't plan to go back.
farlukar@ivanvector @richardgrant @liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard I like Vivaldi but I dislike a Chromium monoculture, so I'll begrudgingly be using a trimmed-down Firefox until Servo is in beta territory.
Bas Zoetekouw@ivanvector @richardgrant @liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard @farlukar But Servo wull offer only a website Component, right, rather than a full browser? Are there any real open source non-firefox forks left?
@baszoetekouw @ivanvector @richardgrant @liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @farlukar
yeah it's just the renderer. someone did a browser wrapper but the rendererer is still changing. but i expect there'll be a browser with all the browser stuff soon as servo is usable for real work.
@davidgerard @baszoetekouw @richardgrant @liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @farlukar Always choices to make moving away from American big tech.
I've tried a few of the Firefox forks. I haven't tried Servo, but the ones I did try I eventually found that there were some things I do on the internet that I was just going to have to do without, with those forks. Or I would have to run two browsers, and then it's a very short road to "why bother? Just use Firefox". Firefox drinking the AI kool-aid pushed me to look at non-mozilla browsers.
Vivaldi ticks enough of the boxes that I feel are important. I use Edge at work (it's the furthest I can get away from the company force-installing Chrome) so I'm already familiar with chromium. It's not fully FOSS, but the company says things about avoiding tracking and algorithms and prioritizing privacy that I want to hear. They're employee-owned, although I don't see a lot of detail on what exactly that means. And they're not American.
Most importantly for me, almost everything I tried to do just worked out of the box. The only real issue I've had so far is that it uses extensions from the Chrome Web Store and is subject to Google's meddling there, so no uBlock Origin.
@ivanvector @davidgerard @baszoetekouw @richardgrant @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @farlukar That last part sounds like a deal breaker to me
@baszoetekouw @ivanvector @richardgrant @liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard There are many browsers, but few render engines. The render engine is the hard part, as far as I can tell.
@ivanvector @richardgrant @liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard “even if it was not Jake who was personally involved”
It's easy to miss, but it's right there, about half a second into the OPs gif:
It's easy to miss, but it's right there, about half a second into the OPs gif:
@farlukar @ivanvector @richardgrant @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard Love my browser's marketing too run a psyop on mee
Kyle
Pavel A. Samsonov@farlukar @ivanvector @richardgrant @liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard I changed from Chrome to Firefox last year because I was tired of Gemini on everything, and don't I feel like an asshole now
cwicseolfor@PavelASamsonov At least the hop to forks is like stepping over an invisible property line instead of a flight of stairs? It’s an insult we have to, though.
Jérôme Petazzoni@ivanvector @richardgrant @liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @[email protected]
At this point, it looks like Mozilla leadership is deliberately trying to alienate their user base to shrink Firefox market share. Obviously this serves Google's interests.
I've been wondering lately how Mozilla leadership got there (what's the process to name and remove them?). Was Google involved in putting them in this position? How do we replace them with people who care about Firefox users instead?
Octavia Con Amore 
Succubard's Library@ivanvector @soatok @richardgrant @liquor_american @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard I left Windows because of their genAI bullshit, and I left Firefox because of their genAI bullshit 
I'm also willing to add more to that list and remember who tried shoving genAI bullshit down our throats once this bubble collapses 
I'm also willing to add more to that list and remember who tried shoving genAI bullshit down our throats once this bubble collapses 
Go. Outside. Touch. Grass. ☮️
And blink twice if you need help.
You do not have to write these little "comebacks". Everybody and their dog can see right through them, and they accomplish nothing, other than wasting your personal lifetime.
@duke_of_germany @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs the phrase "corporate DARVO" needs more currency, it's what Jake is doing here. Nobody is this stupid.
Cap Ybarra@davidgerard @duke_of_germany @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs i used to try to assume constructive framing for all arguments like this but since the advent of the slop merchants all bets are off. they are immune to reason because listening to you means they make less money
The Orange Theme@duke_of_germany @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard Imagine getting 80 brief years on this beautiful marble (if you're lucky) and spending half of it simping for billionaires. Tragic.
Oriel Jutty 
@jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard @jaffathecake This is disgusting. You've spent multiple discussion threads ignoring central issue(s) and going off on tangents, focusing on irrelevant details, and just generally avoiding even mentioning the things people are actually concerned about. And now you're trying to turn this around by claiming Duke is avoiding an issue? And putting words in his mouth by claiming he is putting words in your mouth when no such thing happened? All that just to avoid talking about the core issues in this thread?
Are you a professional gaslighter or something?
Before this AI nonsense, I used to recommend (or straight up install) Firefox to friends, acquaintances and family, but I don't think I ever will again. I feel grossed out.
@barubary @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs he is Developer Relations, a marketing job. That is, Jake is literally a professional gaslighter. Hence the persistent corporate DARVO.
@davidgerard @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs Oh, I see: "Developer relations lead" at Mozilla (and previously "developer advocate" at Google). No wonder he's putting "developer of sorts" in all his profiles/blurbs/blogs.
Ben Rosengart@barubary @davidgerard @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs That’s silly, all the sorts are in textbooks already, we don’t need more
(Sorry)
@davidgerard @barubary @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs Something something hard to get a man to understand something...
The Manchurian Idiot@barubary @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard
Should the gaslighting be opt-out?
Yes
Maybe later
Poll ended at .
forbidden_expressions.clol'd at this
@barubary I find the pattern of sneaking in little accusations into longer messages particularly dishonest and distasteful. So no, I do not let people get away with that. Like the accusation of calling people crazy, it's deliberate, and if challenging people who do that is disgusting, I guess that's what I am.
@jaffathecake @barubary but are you capable of actually directly addressing and engaging with the fact that multiple people keep on telling you "no, I don't want that thing that you're talking about"?
it appears that you have an impression that people here are hostile towards your responses. I posit that _your_ continual evasion and non-engagement of this matter is why. as many others have.
so, y'know, maybe try other, better responses.. up to you tho
@froztbyte @barubary I don't doubt the honesty of people saying they don't want a particular feature to be available to them, or anyone else. Given it's more of a statement, I'm not sure what the acceptable response is, other than "ack".
I posted this a few weeks ago which I felt was a broad acknowledgement https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115859962325484652
@jaffathecake @barubary “Not able to action” is quite load bearing
I offer to you: you could’ve made another poll, such as the one that outperformed yours. And then you could have taken those values and said in a meeting “hey, it kinda seems none of our users want this”
So I want to ask: are you under a directive that explicitly told you not to do that? Or perhaps under some implicit kind of situation (e.g. “I know $manager won’t listen”) which made you not even consider that?
> are you under a directive that explicitly told you not to do that?
No.
> Or perhaps under some implicit kind of situation (e.g. “I know $manager won’t listen”) which made you not even consider that?
No, but a poll that gives me the evidence to say "hey, you know that place that has a strong representation of people who don't like AI? They don't like AI." did not seem like a good use of my time.
@froztbyte @barubary whereas, I'd seen mocks where you couldn't block AI, whist enabling specific features like translation. I felt this was a major missing use-case, so I creating a poll somewhere that is well represented by people who'd want to use such AI controls.
It's really that straight forward.
@jaffathecake @barubary okay so if the (for lack of a better term) problem is that gathering data from the fedi might be biased, what about shipping a survey and linking it in update notes?
Firefox 148, pop it into the release notes. "hey, we've done this update. also, we want to know whether you want us to work on this stuff". you'll get answers from a fairly solid bit of your userbase. it'd be quite interesting to see those numbers, don't you think?
@froztbyte @barubary user research has been carried out, so repeating it doesn't seem necessary at this stage. I've been asking if there are details I can share publicly, but I haven't heard back.
@jaffathecake @barubary just to clarify, with "user research" do you mean the polls on bsky/fedi/etc, or were there other surveys conducted in places?
(asking because I don't think I saw any such surveys anywhere, and I'm _moderately_ on top of seeing this stuff go around)
@froztbyte I don't believe they were social media surveys, as the goal was to get a representative sample among locations and types of user. But it isn't information I currently have, and maybe won't be able to share.
@jaffathecake if it's not information you currently have, doesn't that leave the possibility that they might in fact reflect a negative or inconclusive outcome in polling?
I mean, I get that you don't have eyes on this yourself and that you can't speak to it, I'm not putting this on *you*. but do you see how it could be possible that, without these results being open, someone could be going full steam ahead _in spite_ of the findings?
@froztbyte I suppose that's literally true. But, I also think a mountain is made out of the molehill that is AI in Firefox. The vast majority of the dev time is on other things.
To be clear, I'm not someone who has personally found AI generally useful in browsers (aside from a couple of one-off automations), but my feelings aren't strong enough to deny those features to others.
Damien de Lemeny@jaffathecake @froztbyte
To be clear. Making commercial chatbots available as first class citizen of the browser knowing their baggage in terms of ecological and social destruction is OK with you ?
Making non-authored, non-reviewed translations/summaries available as a first-class citizen of the browser doesn't even light an ethical warning ?
These could be available to users *who want them* without being promoted on the level of a standard experience of the web browser, who's denied anything?
@ddelemeny @froztbyte I don't personally use the chatbot feature.
I do use translation, with full awareness that it's a machine translation, and I consider being able to read parts of the web that aren't in my native language a wonderful thing, and I'm glad it's done in a privacy-preserving way.
The models were downloaded when I asked for the translation to happen. They weren't there beforehand.
@jaffathecake @froztbyte you aren't reading a part of the web. The translation was never on the web. Nobody had the opportunity to make sure it's right and nobody ever will. Ethics go farther than privacy.
I don't care if you personally don't use the chatbot feature. The existence of it in the default build will actively normalize and promote it to a userbase larger than the population of Brazil. Is social irresponsibility part of the manifesto here ?
@ddelemeny @froztbyte how do you feel about a11y tooling that analyses images to describe them? Therefore providing people with visibility into things they otherwise wouldn't have.
That also is generating content in a format that was never on the web. Nobody had the opportunity to make sure it's right and nobody ever will.
"Of course this data that prove me right I can't share with you" keeping on gaslighting us I see...