Firefox is expanding its AI-powered features, all designed to keep your data private. We believe technology should serve you, not monitor you. Our team und
What about the trend of Firefox being the only alternative entity to the massive public corporations that definitely don’t have your best interests at heart that actually has the resources to develop and maintain a modern browser? Everytime Firefox posts anything you have people running around screaming that the sky is falling, and while they have made some missteps,
I don’t see how local LLM models that you don’t have to use is something to panic about, and I don’t see how throwing the baby out with the bathwater is supposed to make the webbrowser landscape better. In fact, it would be giving all of the cards to Google.
Being skeptical isn’t the same thing as trashing them. Mozilla are not above reproach, and should be questioned thoroughly to ensure that they are being completely clear and honest and not using weasel words to gloss over some common trends with implementations of AI.
Honestly the only reason I even engage is because Mozilla/Firefox are the most respecting of privacy or the big players and I want that to continue.
Being skeptical isn’t the same thing as trashing them. Mozilla are not above reproach, and should be questioned thoroughly
This is true, but it is not what you’re doing when you make comments like the one I originally replied to. Firefox putting local models in the browser for people that want to use models but don’t want to send their data to cloud providers is directly a privacy forward option, and somehow you are twisting that into them selling your data.
Sorry, but that is not reasonable criticism. It is FUD.
Local models doesn’t guarantee that all data stays local. Do you assume that local AI models in Firefox will NOT send any telemetry data as the default setting?
Wouldn’t it be better to know for sure that they will have that either disabled or have telemetry as an opt in?
I don’t need to be a source code expert to understand what Mozilla has done, thankfully. That’s not a technological hurdle the average person should have to overcome. I know more than most people have the privilege to know, and further gatekeeping (any gatekeeping) is unnecessary.
If that was not your intent, or for other people who are genuinely interested:
If gatekeeping my comment was your intent, I would be happy to track down the source code as long as you made an extensive effort to get Mozilla to remove the code that collects your data…
So my bad, I didn’t clock the PPA abbreviation being about the experimental adtech bullshit they pulled.
But I feel like my point still stands. Claims that Mozilla is harvesting user data should be (relatively) easily proven by audits of the source code. Disproving things tends to be harder, and I’m not the person making the claim.
I’m not “gatekeeping” shit. I’m saying that bold claims should have facts backing them up, and so far I’ve not been shown anything to back it up.
(Edit: to be clear, the claim that these local AI features would be an increase in user data being harvested)
You appear to have strong feelings about this, so I was hoping you had more than specious claims based entirely off a major gaffe.
I’m not saying that Firefox and Mozilla should get trust by default. I’m saying that if they are doing shit as heinous as what you claimed, there should be evidence that can be pointed to.
Even something as simple as “hey, their prepackaged versions aren’t reproducable by compiling the source code”.
There are enough people who care a lot about this, and the source code is right there. No one should have to speculate on any of what Mozilla is or isn’t doing here as it’s all out in the open.
I don’t want these features either, but they specifically say up front that the AI runs locally to avoid exactly this disingenuous argument.
Soon we’ll have every already bloated app running a slightly different local LLM in order to check the AI tickbox.
Can’t wait.
I want my browser to render web pages as fast as possible and using as few resources as possible, while complying with W3C standards.
For anything else I might want, there’s extensions.
This AI bullshit is costing me RAM, CPU cycles, and electricity without giving me anything of value in return. It’s malware, plain and simple.
The AI may run locally, but is it keeping all of the interactions local too?
Do we trust anyone who is jamming AI bullshit into their products and services?
I won’t use any of these features, but this comment is pure FUD
Being skeptical due to trends is not FUD.
What about the trend of Firefox being the only alternative entity to the massive public corporations that definitely don’t have your best interests at heart that actually has the resources to develop and maintain a modern browser? Everytime Firefox posts anything you have people running around screaming that the sky is falling, and while they have made some missteps,
I don’t see how local LLM models that you don’t have to use is something to panic about, and I don’t see how throwing the baby out with the bathwater is supposed to make the webbrowser landscape better. In fact, it would be giving all of the cards to Google.
Being skeptical isn’t the same thing as trashing them. Mozilla are not above reproach, and should be questioned thoroughly to ensure that they are being completely clear and honest and not using weasel words to gloss over some common trends with implementations of AI.
Honestly the only reason I even engage is because Mozilla/Firefox are the most respecting of privacy or the big players and I want that to continue.
This is true, but it is not what you’re doing when you make comments like the one I originally replied to. Firefox putting local models in the browser for people that want to use models but don’t want to send their data to cloud providers is directly a privacy forward option, and somehow you are twisting that into them selling your data.
Sorry, but that is not reasonable criticism. It is FUD.
Local models doesn’t guarantee that all data stays local. Do you assume that local AI models in Firefox will NOT send any telemetry data as the default setting?
Wouldn’t it be better to know for sure that they will have that either disabled or have telemetry as an opt in?
Yes. I will assume that unless it is found to be untrue, because I don’t think making up things to be upset about is productive.
It runs. That’s enough to not want it, if I don’t want to use it in the first place.
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Show me where the data is sent back to Mozilla. It’s all open source. I’ll wait.
I don’t need to be a source code expert to understand what Mozilla has done, thankfully. That’s not a technological hurdle the average person should have to overcome. I know more than most people have the privilege to know, and further gatekeeping (any gatekeeping) is unnecessary.
If that was not your intent, or for other people who are genuinely interested:
https://noyb.eu/en/firefox-tracks-you-privacy-preserving-feature
If gatekeeping my comment was your intent, I would be happy to track down the source code as long as you made an extensive effort to get Mozilla to remove the code that collects your data…
So my bad, I didn’t clock the PPA abbreviation being about the experimental adtech bullshit they pulled.
But I feel like my point still stands. Claims that Mozilla is harvesting user data should be (relatively) easily proven by audits of the source code. Disproving things tends to be harder, and I’m not the person making the claim.
I’m not “gatekeeping” shit. I’m saying that bold claims should have facts backing them up, and so far I’ve not been shown anything to back it up.
(Edit: to be clear, the claim that these local AI features would be an increase in user data being harvested)
You appear to have strong feelings about this, so I was hoping you had more than specious claims based entirely off a major gaffe.
I’m not saying that Firefox and Mozilla should get trust by default. I’m saying that if they are doing shit as heinous as what you claimed, there should be evidence that can be pointed to.
Even something as simple as “hey, their prepackaged versions aren’t reproducable by compiling the source code”.
There are enough people who care a lot about this, and the source code is right there. No one should have to speculate on any of what Mozilla is or isn’t doing here as it’s all out in the open.
Apology accepted.
Crazy how Mozilla has done so much stuff that people just forgot