After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla’s new CEO that Firefox will evolve into “a modern AI browser,” the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser.
On Tuesday, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation, the company behind the beloved Firefox web browser used by almost all GNU/Linux distributions as the default browser.
In his message as new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo stated that Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software while remaining the company’s anchor, and that Firefox will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.
What was not made clear is that Firefox will also ship with an AI kill switch that will let users completely disable all the AI features that are included in Firefox. Mozilla shared this important update earlier today to make it clear to everyone that Firefox will still be a trusted web browser.
I have a better kill switch: Waterfox and LibreWolf. Don't have to worry about of that nonsense right out the gate.
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Zen has also committed to not include AI features
I jumped to LibreWolf this week. Really like it, it looks acat and feels the same. But I trust it more. Been a FF user for over 10 years.
I'm considering it. The only reason being to get away from a corporate stance that could shift at any time, even though I don't think it's quite there yet.
However on issue of Firefox going the way of all the other browsers, I swear that the last update or so of Firefox asked me if I wanted to enable AI, I said no, and it told me how to turn it on if I ever wanted it. Much like when I first used DuckDuckGo. So wasn't that opt in? Did it change how it prompts a new user?
It’s worth a try. It’s only a few min to do. My extensions seem to be all from Mozilla and working fine.
The only real difference is it has a bit of a classic FF apathetic and seems to highlight who’s abusing privacy. I can click that off but I like it.
I also use DDG but that’s gone downhill on its results in the last few years.
Some websites doesn't work with librewolf like Onshape.com . Is there an easy solution for website like those?
Waterfox. As I understand it, Librewolf goes to extremes for privacy to the point where it may impact your browsing experience. Waterfox cares about privacy too but not to the same extreme.
But that's just saying that instead of using Firefox and not turning on the feature, you'll use a less maintained version of Firefox where they didn't enable the feature. I don't feel like those projects have much value add in the privacy spectrum compared to Firefox, particularly when one of them was owned by an advertising company, and neither of them actually has the resources to maintain or operate a browser in isolation, which is a major concern regarding security and privacy both.
While I can't speak for LibreWolf, I can tell you that Waterfox is based on the latest ESR builds and is extremely well maintained to the point of evolving into its own thing entirely. It's one of the oldest forks I've known. The fact it's been around this long should speak volumes. That being said, most modern forks that I've tried tend to base themselves on ESR as well and evolved in a similar way.