Moz used to be about shaping the web for the better, it should get back to that. Browsers are for everyone but you don't do that by making the web worse.

The CEO's message is very politician-speak: "Everyone has different options, so who is to say what is right or wrong? Therefore we will do nothing to push back against obviously harmful developments because some people like it." (Which encourages the harm by default, of course)

Hi Eugen, unrelated but if you have time, would like to hear your thoughts on this case study I did.

thatshubham.com/blog/mastodon

Rethinking Mastodon's Post Visibility UX

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Of all the tech companies, I'd hoped FF would be in a category where they communicate with their user base to gauge the need and desire for what is a significant technology inflection.

As a UX/UI/Researcher, I dispair of execs who either don't care what users want or treat a small majority as a binary switch, rather than a signal that building the tech should also include a single big one-click and comprehensive opt-out. Or two binaries - one with AI & one without AI and watch the download count. Designing AI to be a modular addition, rather than doing Microsoft's perennial trick of mixing it all up irreversibly would allow this.

I switched to Vivaldi last year, and love it.

I still use Librefox, DDG browser and Ironfox for specific things through.

any idea if there's a way to export you're Mozilla browsing history (and possibly full profile including extensions)? I somewhat rely on the smart suggestions from my history when I start searching up an old article. I also really can't live without the cross device syncing.

Not sure if I'll even decide to switch, but if this is possible (and if another browser actually has server architecture), I'll definitely consider it.

The pushback on this is:

We are in an AI bubble but we are also in a late stage capitalist nightmare and culture warring helps nobody.

Leaving firefox behind for closed source chromium makes absolutely no sense.

Stable firefox forks like librewolf are great and should be used until an independent browser is stable enough for use.

Prerequisites: fully open source, no controlled opposition like mozilla.

While AI has its uses, it absolutely should not be pushed into browsers.

remember when you weren't happy with the state of social media, so started work on a better one and now here we all are?

Any chance you fancy starting work on Euginet Explorer? 😆

I'm so tired of this AI nonsense. Too much "investiment" being made for stuff that isn't THAT useful and isn't even making financial returns.

And also will probably trigger a major worldwide recession.

AI is in the VC burn cash stage, aggressively looking for lock-in so it can switch to the milking stage, identifiable by enshitification.

It is definitely a bubble as the market is yet to prune out most AI, so all are reflecting an NPV of this potential. The market is quadruple counting the same value. Everyone is wrong and a few will be wrong in a good way.

Zen browser (based on firefox) is also a great alternative. I do not believe they have plans to adopt the AI crap.

This definitely feels like a bubble. What kills me is when I hear about people using AI for regular searches they could have looked up on wikipedia, or just a regular search. AI uses so much more energy, and the results are less reliable.

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I'm allegic to Google & closed source. 🤧

wrote...

"I've finally switched to the @Vivaldi browser. I've been using Firefox for as long as I've been on the internet, but the focus on AI means it's no longer the browser for me. Thankfully unlike Chrome, Vivaldi supports the uBlock Origin extension which is the most important extension for being able to browse the web nowadays."

I've had exactly the same experience! Migrated from #MacOS to #Ubuntu #Linux over the summer. #Firefox was the default browser. In my case FF had/has a huge memory leak that was left to fester for over a month. Looked around and switched to the #Vivaldi browser thinking I'd lose #uBlock--but (pleasant surprise!) there was no limitation on that or any other plug-in I have. 🙂

So far (less than a month) I'm very impressed and happy with Vivaldi. Recommended! 👍

@Vivaldi

Vivaldi is a very sensible choice, it's software made by sensible people, just like you and Mastodon!

Thank you Eugen! Frohe Weihnachten!

my position remains that it is evil for myriad reasons.

And evil is a word I did not use about much of anything until all this, because it has been so abused by creepy megachurch right wingers who point it at the people they’re trying to hurt.

I don't think they necessarily *want* to be deep into AI. Their goal is to shape the web to be human and privacy friendly and if there are users who want AI, and there are, then Mozilla wants to make the industry move in a good direction.

Its why they worked on ad attribution with Facebook. They saw that Googles "privacy sandbox" sucks, so they created something arguably better. And at least partly because of mozilla, google ended the privacy sandbox.

I'm basically 'anti-AI', but the term "AI" is about as meaningful as the term "smart" was. It can be arbitrarily broad, to support any "AI is good" argument.

Take OCR, audio transcription models, simple classifiers, etc. These are genuinely useful! And SOTA is genuinely better in 2025 than it was in even 2021.

They aren't LLMs, but they're neural networks. Anyone can call them "AI" if they want.

I'll say one thing. Even IF something has potential uses (none of which they're forcing on us anyway) opt out should never ever ever be the default. Anything that they have to force on people instead of letting people choose for themselves they are admitting (by definition!) is a thing people would not choose for themselves... If their uses were valid and great, they could have it off by default and people would rush to turn it on on any new installation! They wouldn't have to hide the options to disable it in about:config (and even hide about:config on some browsers,) nor force the options back on with updates. They could just have a single checkbox in normal settings that everyone would click as soon as they install it.

Not doing so is admitting they know people wouldn't