by protocolture | 2025-12-19 10:44:45+00:00
>This is the job of every engineer.

No its not. Engineering is about right sizing the product. This is not that. Theres no user story, theres no pressing demand. Every CTO in the world might be racing to force AI into their products regardless of utility but there's no reason to pretend this is being done for good engineering reasons.

>Work with customers and you'll experience this first hand.

Theres no customer benefit to shoving AI in every application at every layer. This is not about the customer. This is about a race to cram the feature in every conceivable space and see where it sticks. This is corporate and has no sense of good engineering. They also don't want it. What a combo. No utility and no demand. If anything its a bit like the story of fish fingers, where the pressing need, was the big warehouse full of unwanted fish bits that they wanted to move, and the innovation was productising it in such a way that people would actually purchase and consume it. In this case we have DC's full of AI cards that desperately want a market. It might be uncharitable, but I do wonder if the Mozilla Foundation has been promised some financial reward if they solve this issue.

There has not been any demonstrable requirements gathering for this change. An executive directed this, and to pretend otherwise is insane.

>Speaking about reading between the lines, the privacy community is not very good at advocating for privacy.

No they aren't very good at it at all, but that's a massive non sequitur.

>So stop with this bullshit, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

No, defending Firefox from valid criticism is the self inflicted injury.

>I use Arch but that doesn't mean I'm going to piss on Ubuntu every chance I get.

Ok, but I would think it fair and reasonable to criticise Ubuntu if they decided to randomly cram an opt out LLM into the distro, and I think your criticism of them also deserves to be heard. You dont need to be the Ubuntu or Firefox internet defense force.

>So why get angry because someone is making a step in the right direction?

I haven't been angry at a single firefox user here, I would ask you to stop making things up just to be angry about. There's not an ounce of "Boycott" or anything in my posts. I am writing this from firefox. I am permitted, to be critical of the browser I am using.

>I'm mad at you because you're attacking our literal last line of defense for a secure and private internet.

"Attacking". Its clearly necessary criticism. The devaluing of the product is coming from inside the house. Their chief rival is, critically, releasing a separate browser to test their AI features in. For Chrome itself Gemini is in the extension store. It is OPT IN, not OPT OUT. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gemini-for-chrome/a... Their chief rival is respecting end user consent better. If you want them to be a more popular browser, why don't you hold them to a better standard than Chrome, instead of policing the critics?

(Also boo for making me open chrome to check)

>Stop with this "no true Scotsman" bullshit.

I literally cannot identify a no true scotsman argument in my comments. Theres a difference between saying "No TRUE web browser would" and pointing out validly that there's no interest or demand in the feature being rolled out. If anything, the closest thing in this thread to a no true scotsman, while still failing it technically, is the idea that you cant be a true supporter of privacy while being critical of Mozilla.

>We can have those arguments at a later date when Firefox isn't on its last leg and/or when we have a diverse choice in browsers.

No now is a great time.

>But at this point all you are doing is advocating for Chrome.

No I am asking them to be competitive with chrome, and treat users that well or better.

>But it didn't work, so we need to try something else.

Enshittification isnt a plan.