Avid AmoebaFirefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs
all you have to do is click on Settings > AI Controls. You’ll then see a very bold and prominent option called ‘Block AI Enhancements.’
I don’t see it on mobile though.
Ep1cFac3pa1mOn Android or iOS? I’m pretty sure the iOS app is just a re-skinned Safari, isn’t it?
ageedizzleDepends where you. In some places (I think it was Japan?) Apples practice of not allowing alternative browser engines was deemed anticompetitive and outlawed
LeonSame in Europe but I don’t think Mozilla spent the time and effort needed to bring Gecko to iOS. So it’s still just a reskinned WebKit.
Well there you go. Hopefully they get around to overthrowing the mobile webkit overlords soon enough
doug
Arcane2077All iOS browsers are webkit under the hood (aka “reskinned safari”)
🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞Yep. It’s a choice Apple users make (probably unknowingly, to be fair) when they choose Apple.
I just opened setting on a firefox tab, clicked on the three lines in the upper right, and the settings. There is not AI controls in there, and searching settings didn’t pull up any ai thing.
This is like when I tried to take gemini off of my phone, it’s hidden, instructions online didn’t work, the links didn’t exist on my phone. It’s still on there, but hasn’t turned itself on multiple times when I somehow swiped or hit something as it did a year ago or so a bunch.
It should be opt in not work to opt out and we hid the way to do that.
Maybe the article was written by AI that hallucinated the setting.
Huh, maybe I need to wait for firefox to update or for me to restart the computer if they just did it. I’m also running an older version of windows I think, I don’t even know which one actually but they tried to upgrade me for free and I told them no a couple of years back.
UlrichSupposedly. Says 148 in About.
KissakiMozilla has released so many self-described AI features in the past few years, but this is the only one that has:
- been requested by the community
- received broad critical acclaim
I hope Mozilla learns their lesson. I doubt they will, but I hope.
sadly I’ll likely support them through any shitty decisions they make as they are the only viable non-chromium alternative these days.
I get they’re chasing the buck and trying to stay relevant, but uhhhh… if they could be less Steve Buscemi-teen about it, that’d be great.
I strongly believe that the EU should fund Mozilla, or a fork of Firefox.
Gecko is the only viable competitor to Blink/WebKit, and it is needed
Govts around the world should be funding all sorts of FOSS projects. I know they do to some degree but not much. It benefits the whole world and only hurts big tech.
Rob T FireflyThat prospect becomes less and less likely the more government is bought and paid for by Big Tech.
SigntistThis is what people don’t understand. Those in power, whether they’re part of the government, a wealthy CEO, or a religious leader, will do what benefits themselves if they think they can get away with it. We keep talking about powerful organizations and what they could do to benefit everyone, but fail to realize that powerful people don’t want to benefit everyone.
They only do what benefits everyone if they feel like they can’t get away with just doing what benefits themselves. It’s our responsibility to make sure they don’t think they can get away with it, and clearly strongly-worded letters and quippy signs held outside their offices for an afternoon or two isn’t enough to do that.
Engywook
douglasg14bFirefox is just the browser, Mozilla is the organization constantly wasting money on features Firefox’s users are actively hostile to in a bid to tempt away people already using Chrome. Not the OP, but I’d be down to donate to Firefox’s development directly, but I wouldn’t want to make a donation to Mozilla hoping it would go toward Firefox, only to find out they took my money to build some new LLM integration that nobody asked for, only to sit unused for years before being quietly shuttered in favor of the new tech buzzword of the day.
Maybe funding components would be better than funding mozilla. Eg: 2 engineers for Gecko
This is probably common knowledge to you and many others, but it bears repeating: You cannot donate to fund the development of Mozilla Firefox.
Google can, unfortunately.
I’m pretty sure you can donate to Mozilla, are you saying that donations to Mozilla don’t accomplish what we might want? I only know a little about how much Mozilla sucks so I’m ready to learn more.
There are two interlinked Mozillas: the Mozilla Foundation is what you can donate to, but the Mozilla Corporation is what develops Firefox. No matter how much you donate, that money cannot (or will not) be transferred to Firefox development.
Mozilla’s recent history includes privacy flub after financial management misstep, so here’s a few links in no particular order of severity or chronology:
- https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/nearly-a-year-later-mozilla-is-still-promoting-onerep/
- https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/05/mozilla-foundation-lays-off-30-staff-drops-advocacy-division/
- https://smoshed.substack.com/p/ublock-origin-lite-maker-ends-firefox
- https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/07/crypto-wallet-security-layer-webacy-raises-4m
- https://mastodon.social/@stevetex/113162099798398758
Each of these are a little rabbit hole on their own.
Reminder that Krebs is an asshole who responds to criticism by doxxing the accounts of other security researchers.
I recommend Waterfox
They have to not fill their browser with AI slop features.
Last time I tried Waterfox some sites like Twitch that actively block usage on old browsers, refused to work because the latest Waterfox release was based on a Firefox like 20+ builds behind.
I have used it for twitch for years without issue. I also have ublock origin with twitch adblock.
Well you clearly haven’t used the standard available download (non-beta/nightly release) consistently through last year. Waterfox was using ESR 128 since October 2024, kept that base until finally upgrading to ESR 140 last August. So that’s nearly a year of its base being out of date. So the user agent reported that number… sites really don’t like that since they’re looking at that for support.
https://www.waterfox.com/releases/6.5.0/ https://www.waterfox.com/releases/6.6.0/
Twitch only supports the last TWO versions of Firefox officially and will actively block logging in from older versions. So while you might be able to watch Twitch, if you aren’t already logged in, you won’t be able to login.
https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/supported-browsers?language=en_US
There are thousands of posts about it online for Waterfox other forks.
It was outdated, but only for a couple months. Firefox ESR is built to last about a year, and it was maintained with security patches up-to-date alongside Firefox Production versions 129, 130, 131, 132… all the way to 139. Only then did ESR 140 come out.
But if Twitch only supports the two most recent Firefox production versions, I guess ESR wouldn’t cut it after FF 131 came out.
ElectricAirshipLadybird browser looks promising!
The_DecryptorThe ladybird devs are currently in the process of switching language again from Swift to Rust, using LLMs.
Yup. Don’t use or support Ladybird, especially since it’s made by anti-inclusivity “keep your ‘political’ gender-neutral pronouns out of our READMEs” nerdbros.
On the other hand, Servo is coming along nicely.
github.com/LadybirdBrowser/…/CONTRIBUTING.md
Use gender-neutral pronouns, except when referring to a specific person.
?
That line is actually part of a very interesting change to the document.
https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/commit/627dcb90bdd23ccfa2ae210d55b474ab4a844db0
I watched this unfold as it happened. It kind of left a bad taste in my mouth after that.
Yeah ofc they are chasing the buck.
It’s either they find alternatives revenue streams or we no longer have Firefox as a viable alternative anymore.
Browsers development is crazy engineering heavy, and this, expensive.
Ricky RigatoniProblem is Mozilla needs money and shoving AI features into shit is how you get investors these past few years.
Funnily enough, it’s the other way around: Mozilla has been dumping money into AI VC startups.
I don’t think the vietcong are doing much of anything for the past couple decades.
I think they’re desperate to make money since they’re losing userbass AND Google is probably not happy that most users change the default search engine away from them.
Does anyone really think the current administration is going to break up Google? Lina Khan almost did it but like most of the rest of this timeline we just didn’t quite get there
Yeah it’s a catch 22.
They either fail to get a big enough use base because their core users are not enough and they fail from a lack of funding.
Or they try to follow trends to increase their appeal and user base, and annoy their core users.
Most users don’t realize that Mozilla is doing what Google is doing with Chrome with an engineering team 1/4 the size of the chrome team. And that the grand majority of their costs are engineering related.
Browsers are expensive, and Mozilla needs to find revenue streams to pay for it.
I believe Firefox could raise a lot of money through donations. If they make it clear that Firefox donations will be solely used for Firefox development. Also ideally add a quick survey to donations to see what the “donating” userbases values are. My issue with donating to Mozilla is that it is too broad and they have many products I don’t care for.
I use Thunderbird and donate to it because I feel it’s more focused. I believe Mozilla still can use the funds for other stuff but at least I am donating for a clear project.
Firefox donations will be solely used for Firefox development
This might be a stupid question… but how much developing does a browser actually need? I get security updates and such but how much resources does that stuff really need? Full disclosure: I’m a dumb lorry driver I have no idea how these things work. Some years ago I realized I hadn’t updated my browser in at least a year, maybe two and I had no issues lol
Infinite money Google keeps trying to push shit to the standard so all other browsers end up needing significant dedicated resources to keep up or risk getting blamed for broken sites.
It is really difficult to implement in the first place, and the standards evolve constantly.
Some argue it may not be possible to build new browsers anymore
Some argue it may not be possible to build new browsers anymore
A conservative guess would be around 60 people.
bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi
You can click around and see the bug reports they’re working on. There are a few, to say the least.
www.firefox.com/en-US/releases/
This is a way to see what’s in each release. The ones on the left are major releases and tend to have bigger features, and the others tend to be bug fixes.
Web browsers start with core functionality that’s very complex. Then you tack on that they’re being used for things like banking, and managing the critical details of people’s lives. That means security galore, which is hard and constant. Then you have ad people, who are also something that’s hard to defend against.
Then there’s the constant flood of new features you have to implement to keep up with Google.
Chrome has 1,000 to 4,000 people working on it. Mozzila employs about 700 to work on firefox, with maybe 1,000 additional open source developers.
My initial guess was very wrong.
BlisterexeTo be fair people liked the translation feature too
AppoxoTWP dumps your pages to google translate, no thanks. FF is on device