Firefox going AI, to the surprise of nobody

[Night Wing]

After looking at my Waterfox attachment, I realized I forgot to include my Download button to the right of of my Home button. So I had to use the Customization Toolbar to find and add it.

[andyprough]

I ran into a different one recently - Firedragon browser. It's a Floorp fork by the makers of Garuda Linux (an Arch Linux distro). Firedragon has some allegedly hardened privacy configs borrowed from Librewolf/Arkenfox/Tor browser. Looks like there are various ways to use it on a GNU/Linux distro, such as with a binary tarball, an AppImage, and a Flatpak, and there's also downloads for Windows and Mac: https://gitlab.com/garuda-linux/firedra ... -/releases

It's a very colorful thing - here's the "dr460nized" color theme that I am trying out:

firedragon.jpg

And here's the "Catppuccin" color theme:

firedragon2.jpg

I've barely tried it, but it seems to load sites pretty well. In my limited testing the privacy settings looked quite good.

[Moonchild]

"Firefox is rolling out a major privacy and control upgrade: starting with version 148 on February 24, 2026, the browser will let users turn off all generative AI features, completely and permanently, or manage them individually."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X7npdIczpM

My thoughts: Mozilla adds highly unpopular AI first without even asking if their users are even interested, gets massive backlash, and now touts being able to block the crap nobody wanted them to add in the first place as the best thing since sliced bread... Typical for Mozilla. "Look at how much control we're giving you" virtue-signalling BS.

[Mæstro]

Typical for Mozilla. "Look at how much control we're giving you" virtue-signalling

Performing like this can mould common opinion, especially for newcomers or casual observers. To choose another example from the bowels of programming, my introduction to the controversy about ‘YandereDev’ had come through his own statements in 2018 on the matter. This succeeded in misleading me into thinking that he was working on his game in good faith, but had been arbitrarily chosen as a dummy to beat by the internet’s fickle hordes. Some years of closely watching his (lack of) development progress were necessary to disillusion me. Even now, the Wikipedia article on his game treats it far more seriously than it has any right, ignoring or glossing over anything suggesting the affair might not be legitimate. Casual users who read ‘Mozilla is letting users choose whether to use LLM’ on HowToGeek or Reddit will not think twice. If they even suspect there is any applicable context, they will not care enough to find it.

[Night Wing]

To make this short. When my linux Firefox 148 is released, I will look for that AI setting and turn everything off. Ditto if my linux Waterfox also has that setting.

[Mæstro]

Ditto if my linux Waterfox also has that setting.

Happily, that is not so. Waterfox declared a few months ago that it would never implement LLM the way Firefox did. Relevant sections of the code are simply omitted. This was among the reasons I chose Waterfox to substitute my frozen Ungoogled Chromium version late last year as a backup browser.