@davidgerard To be honest, if they say they receive that request from a lot of users I have no reason (nor do I care) to question it.

What I wonder is if they are also measuring how many they lose. I am biased but in my circle, I have seen literally everyone (I was the one last standing) switching to any other browser.

Don't know, there is a good bunch of directors over there, I'm trusting they are smarter than I am.

@davidgerard

I can't seem to find these "mysterious" users either.

The only ones who seem really enthusiastic about AI is the fossil fuel industry & their tech kleptocrats. The money laundering is endless.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-06/saudis-plan-100-billion-ai-powerhouse-to-rival-uae-s-tech-hub

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/technology/saudi-arabia-ai-exporter.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/29/gas-power-ai-climate

https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/

https://www.theenergymix.com/a-trillion-more-barrels-of-oil-new-ai-tool-would-trigger-400-billion-tonnes-of-climate-pollution/

@davidgerard
Apparently, they also know a whole lot of people who have a different definition of "opt-out" than the rest of us, so they're just keeping the AI features opt-in.

I don't know who these people are or why the Mozilla team's leadership knows so many of them that it warps their understanding of a basic concept, but I do know that I don't want to be alone in a room with them.

@davidgerard

Or, support a better plugin infrastructure that allows 3rd parties to add stuff.

If some 3rd party wants to enshittify with AI, let them.

Keep it out of the base software.

@davidgerard there's this discipline called product management and when some users ask for something, you just do it.

Never validate any feature request against considerations like cost-benefit analysis, interest from other users, whether it would make the product worse for more people than it makes better, any of the irrelevant stuff. Doesn't matter whether it relates to product goals at all either.

If it's a really expensive thing to implement and competitors are years ahead: even better.

@davidgerard

When they say "users" they mean the ones who use your data (remember when they started harvesting your browser activity?) for reasons... You know, like the NSA, DHS, IDF, MI6, etc.

@davidgerard maybe Steve should talk to those DDG people about their latest survey:

https://voteyesornoai.com/

@davidgerard Ooft, lads, that "we don't believe in opt-in because we don't know what it means" thing is a death-knell. Proper jumping in with the techbro PUA creep crowd there.

I'd say that's a pretty solid litmus test for when an OSS project has passed the point of no-return under its current governance. The project may technically remain "open-source", but the point of it being open-source in the first place has been entirely defeated.

Don't need to bother inspecting the source for malware when they're proudly blogposting their way through admitting that they've given the entire company over to the purveyors of malware-in-a-guy-fawkes-mask.

When the entire notion of consent gets reframed so much that they've torn the picture, done a serial-killer magazine montage with the text from it and, oooh, whadya know, it comes out saying "i tHe UnDeRsInEd Do HeArBy gIvE cOnCeNt FoR [eVrYtHiNg]", the source licensing becomes irrelevant. It's radioactive either way. It's just a matter of time before you start losing fingers and toes to it.

@davidgerard those users as real as the proverbial Canadian girlfriend you just never met because, you know, she lives in Canada! 😂

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Canadian%20girlfriend

@davidgerard

WHICH USERS STEVE
SHOW US THESE USERS

Elon Musk Jeff Bezos the winging twit from microsoft who wants us all to love ai,
Thiel Peter Pedo nutter.
and other VIP`class users.
Nearly forgot Steve whatshisname from mozilla management.

We ignored the other 98.99% who keep telling us they do not want Artificial Idiots.

Because they think there are too many real ones around already.

@davidgerard

one could make the argument that the 1:2:7 ratio exists. One¹ very vocal user asking for AI, 2 not very vocal users asking for AI, and 7 users wanting AI and not saying anything. Fair to follow what they are saying. It's like when we see a bug, we know it's affecting more users, than just the users who speak up

However, we have hundreds of very vocal people saying they don't want AI, if double that aren't being very vocal and are voting on their polls that they don't want AI. Just imagine how big the silent majority are who don't want AI

The ratio of people not wanting AI is bigger than the people who want AI, especially when they count the silent majority in each group

One wonders why Mozilla is ignoring the actual numbers and plowing on…

¹ Number are illustrative and don't necessarily represent an accurate amount

@davidgerard ....where by "users" we of course mean "dollars", um, I mean "donors".

Sorry, maybe I should have been more specific (except I'm being paid not to).

@davidgerard

Slopzilla claims they are working for everybody but they keep announcing new AI slop features, but when it comes to major, exciting new Firefox features that aren't AI, they are totally silent.