Firefox Community Forum

go tell your new CEO that nobody wants AI in firefox. do this every day until it gets into his thick CEO skull, i know it might take a while because CEOs are fundamentally braindead but please, do it for us. in the meantime, i will look for another browser to use if you keep shovelling this garbage into firefox.

Hiya.

So if I download an attached file on gmail using Firefox... it crashes. If I open up a new tab on Firefox... it crashes. It only started this week.

I'm using 12.7.6 and I really don't want to go back to Chrome, so I hope you can help.

The macbook completely freezes apart from the mouse pointer which moves, but cannot open a thing. Every time I have to turn the macbook off to restart it.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the latest version.

Best, Mike

Like many others, I had switched over to Firefox because it was the most secure and AI-free option out there. I was willing to accept there would be minimal AI "features" as long as I was able to disable them immediately, which I did. Pushing for more will only alienate the users and make the overall user experience worse. I am tired of checking every second picture if it's AI generated. I am tired of seeing AI generated articles. I never read the AI summaries because who knows when they'll tell me to add glue to my pizza to make the cheese stick more. We already have studies that show generative AI affects an individual's capacity for thought. I have people in my life that are being affected by it. Firefox, being the only non-Chromium based browser, is basically a beacon of normalcy in all this bullshit. Don't mess up the trust of your community by stooping so low. If we wanted AI slop we would be using Google Chrome.

I left chrome and chromium browsers for firefox when it got recommended to me because the main selling point was no AI and no unnecessary bloating functions that slowed it down and that made searches accurate and reliable. Please, instead of trying to add more AI into it, work on removing what you've already implemented.

I saw an article claiming that Firefox/Mozilla's new leadership wants to go the same route as every other browser I've gone out of my way to stop using - to implement unnecessary AI wherever possible.

Is this true? Why?

I do not care if someone else wants to browse without actual search results, if someone wants to have their messages readily typed, or if someone only wants to have guesstimated generated summaries instead of actual snippets from websites. I do not care if someone else wants to have arbitrarily sorted bookmarks or whatever else it might be AI is supposedly good for.

I do not need or want any of these features in a web browser. Why does firefox think it should be the new default?

I have already manually turned off all the AI tools firefox offers this far - and I have been thankful for the option to do so! So now, if even this 'big' optionally somewhat AI free browser is genuinely going the forcefully unintelligent and frankly really pushy and overbearing and bloated way of all the others, I'm kindly asking for suggestions of other browsers to use in the future.

Generative AI relies on the blatant and flagrant violation of user privacy to train its own language models and supply users with its own stolen, bastardized input. It slows down the browser its built into with no benefit, forcing its users to jump through ridiculous hoops and workarounds to disable its resource-gobbling features. If we wanted this, we would swap to browsers like Chrome, Edge, or Opera. If this snake-oil abomination that dares to proclaim itself some sort of advanced "technology" continues to be enforced on us, I, and many others, will simply opt for a different browser that does not enforce this abomination upon its users; of which there are plenty.

Why is Firefox leanining into this ai nonsense? Its antithetical to privacy amd security, it slows down the browser for no benefit, so i end up jumping through hoops to turn it all off. If I wanted AI, I'd be using chrome or edge. I don't want AI. If firrfox continues to shove this ai onto us i'll have to switch again. Its self sabotage at this point

If I go to the profile folder, exit firefox then copy and paste the folder to a backup location. The attempted backup fails. Something about permissions as I recall. I have tried many things unsuccessfully. Something has changed that does not allow for the backup of profile folders. Adding a backup option to the profile manager would be nice. I noticed some people have found work-arounds but I need a straight-forward procedure for backing up my folders. No work-arounds please, just a simple procedure. May I ask for help with this issue?

My Profile Folders can't be backed up. Messages I receive while attempting a backup state that permissions are required to backup certain files. I'm working in an administrator account so that shouldn't be an issue and I use to backup my Profile Folders without an issue.

I am firmly against the application of AI into Firefox as a browser. If the supposed plans to integrate AI into Firefox come into fruition, I will not only look at installing another browser, but I will personally go to every person I know and advise they do the same. I will not support the business model of a company that puts profit above the wants and needs of its customers. I would hate to see the good name of Firefox be lost to misguided efforts to follow the AI hype to it's detriment.

It all started with all my bookmarks in the sidebar turning white and only the little icon visible. I could still open them but I couldn't see them. I rebooted I refreshed to no avail. Then I lost my sidebar altogether, I went into settings and even with the sidebar option ticked, it didn't bring it back and there's no sidebar icon in the top right. My only access to bookmarks now is the bookmark drop down menu top right but this isn't all my bookmarks and its really inconvenient to use. This is the first time I've had ever had a problem with Firefox in 15 years of use. Any input would be appreciated.

I am so disappointed in the new ceos recent comments about doubling down on AI. I do not want AI. I do not want it forced down my throat. The whole point of Firefox is that it is less enshittified than other browsers and continuing down this path will make it just as shitty as everything else on the internet that doesn’t work any more. It’s bad enough that I have to find the settings to opt out of this shit every time there’s a new update that makes everything worse. I have been a happy Firefox user for many years but I will have to use another browser if AI gets imbedded into it any further than it has already. So angry and disappointed.

More of a suggestion than a question - I've been using Firefox for 20 years because of it's focus on privacy and it's lack of pushing trendy slop options (Sloptions?). Almost everyone who uses Firefox is going to be doing so because of this - It's what it's known for and is what makes it unique compared to other search engines. What is going on with the pushing of AI? At they very least make it easy to disable it, that's the bare minimum. This is such a weird shift for the company after years of differentiating itself and with a loyal user base who are using Firefox to avoid this. Why would we be here if not because Firefox is different? Please stop pushing this kind of crap!

Saw a bunch of news articles that said Mozilla has a new CEO who wants to make Firefox a modern AI browser. Fuck that. If I have to spend more than 30 seconds gouging AI bullshit out of the heart of your product, I will stop using it immediately and resort to open source alternatives. Not a question, just a warning. I don't use social media so send this to your PR department or whatever.

To the Firefox development community:

I started using Firefox... well, before it was Firefox. In the early browser wars, I was a devotee of Netscape. After high school, Firefox became a thing, and I was an early adopter. For years I eagerly spoke of the glories of the open source browser, and even when Chrome came around with its "new hotness", I stuck with Firefox. It was, I reckoned, just better.

However, something has happened which has shaken my faith in the browser - and in the Mozilla foundation entirely. As the whole internet screams "WE DO NOT WANT AI", as Valve gets endless kudos from its userbase and a reputation as "the only good monopoly" because it forces its game listings to have disclaimers if AI touches games in any way, and as it becomes known that ChatGPT is pushing teens to suicide...

Mozilla has decided "hey we want that in our browser!"

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

This is the greatest betrayal of a userbase I can imagine. LLMs are the antithesis to the open-source, "you can see what goes into it" mindset that Firefox has had for over 20 years. It is bloat. It is built on plagiarism - by default, all LLMs are built by scraping huge amounts of data that their designers do not own.

Thankfully, there IS a branch of Firefox that does not use AI - the Waterfox project - and I will be turning my attention there. But mark my words - by deciding that the last holdout against putting AI in everything SHOULD put AI in it, you have soured an incredible amount of the goodwill that you have built up.

My personal recommendation: Fire the idiot who made this decision and replace him with ANYONE who has a modicum of sense in the Foundation.

As a last comment, I will say that I am ending it here because I believe this says enough of what I am thinking and feeling at the moment; if I was to say everything it would be approximately 90 pages long and be 35% obscenity by volume, and I don't think the forum rules allow that. Good evening, and may Mark Surman stub his toe every 129 seconds for the rest of his life.

AI is using my data and serving up slop from what it gathers. I'd like to keep as much AI slop out of my Firefox web browser as possible, is there information available on how to block AI features and results from my Firefox?