Skip to main content

snac - Link to source

I'm glad to add Firefox to the list of apps I have to constantly check to make sure they haven't turned back on all the anti-features I disabled.

#firefox #mozilla #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #SmartIsSurveillance #tech #dev #web

#ai #Tech #web #genai #firefox #dev #mozilla #generativeAI #SmartIsSurveillance
in reply to Anthony

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •

Based on the answers to this StackOverflow question and this blog post, here are the 16 (!!!) AI-related settings in new versions of Firefox that you'll want to disable/set to false, and that might be turned back on with each update:

- browser.aiwindow.enabled
- browser.ml.chat.enabled
- browser.ml.chat.menu
- browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge
- browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge
- browser.ml.chat.page
- browser.ml.chat.shortcuts
- browser.ml.chat.sidebar
- browser.ml.enable
- browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled
- browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled
- browser.ml.smartAssist.enabled
- browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled
- browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled
- extensions.ml.enabled
- sidebar.notification.badge.aichat

Enter "about:config" in the browser bar and then search for each of these and disable them, turn them off, or set them to false as appropriate.

Depending on which version of Firefox you have you may not have all these configuration options.

Check your smartphone browsers too!

#firefox #mozilla #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #SmartIsSurveillance #tech #dev #web #NoAI #AICruft #antifeatures


Disable AI In Firefox

Quick reference for how to turn off AI features in Firefox
fLaMEd
#ai #Tech #web #genai #noai #firefox #dev #mozilla #generativeAI #SmartIsSurveillance #antifeatures #AICruft
This entry was edited (1 week ago)

reshared this

in reply to Anthony

Amy
sharkey - Link to source
Amy
• •
as the blog post says, though - confirmed by a Mozilla engineer's comment I saw once - if you want no LLM features at all you only need browser.ml.enable! This gives the impression you need to disable all of these and be on the lookout for more, which is misleading.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Amy

Amy
sharkey - Link to source
Amy
• •
also, what gave you the impression they might be turned back on automatically? That's not how Firefox config is supposed to work.
in reply to Amy

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •
I've lost the link to the post that stated this occurred to them, but I've seen the possibility mentioned. I don't believe you are correct that the config is not supposed to work this way; whether the configs are modified after a Firefox upgrade is at Mozilla's discretion, and if new configuration settings are added they'll choose a default. For their ML and AI features their chosen default has been "true", meaning these are opt-out features. I consider software a bad actor when it opts me into a clearly-problematic new feature without even notifying me that it's done so. Consent matters etc.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Anthony

Amy
sharkey - Link to source
Amy
• •
ye-es, it technically can be. I just wouldn't expect them to do that, and have never seen them do that; what would be the benefit to them? But yes.
in reply to Amy

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •
What would be the benefit to them, a large foundation half-funded by Google, to press AI features into their products against the will of many of their users, the way so many other large tech and tech-adjacent organizations have been doing for several years? I'll leave that one as an exercise for the reader.
in reply to Anthony

Amy
sharkey - Link to source
Amy
• •
I don't know. The benefit to Google is they collect data that way; they are known to do that. Their (all-online) offerings may become subscription services in the future, once they've already got everyone hooked. But Mozilla's offerings (excluding the sidebar integration, which requires clicking a button anyway) run on-device. Quite different!
in reply to Amy

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •

Default opt-in is a dark pattern, and signals an untrustworthy organization in my personal opinion. Something's gone off the rails when software starts including known-controversial features as default opt-in. That's my starting point for all this.

Incorporating Perplexity AI search, as Firefox is also doing, is not on-device. Granted that's different from the features affected by these config options. But who's to say whether future ML and AI features they add will continue to be on device. I for one will be watching them very closely, and I see now downside to doing so.

in reply to Amy

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •
Or, what might lead a large complex piece of software, developed over a long period of time by a large number of engineers, to have diverging namespaces for configuration options that could in theory be merged? I'll leave that one as an exercise for the reader also.
in reply to Amy

Drikanis
mastodon - Link to source
Drikanis
• •

Anecdotally, I've had it flip back on between updates. I've also had pop-ups advertising new AI features in Firefox even with the "global" ML option set to off.

If it's supposed to be behind a single flag that never turns itself back on, it at the very least seems unreliable.

And even if the flags did work as intended, that doesn't change the fact that this should be disabled by default, and strictly opt-in.

in reply to Amy

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •

Please don't refer to my post as misleading without first asking where I'm coming from. That's needlessly accusatory, and helps no one.

browser.ml.enable presumably does not clobber all the LLM/AI features. There are "smartAssist", "aiWindow" and "aichat" features that may or may not be affected by that setting, since they are in different namespaces. Furthermore, if you'd read the StackOverflow page and the comments, you'd have seen that some of these features are newly-added in the latest release of Firefox. Hence the admonition to be on the lookout for new ones.

in reply to Anthony

Amy
sharkey - Link to source
Amy
• •

I should have perhaps qualified with "to the best of my knowledge", sorry. I didn't mean it was misleading intentionally at all. I'm just worried this will give people needless anxiety, scouring about:config every Firefox update.

I believe it does though - although yes, technically we cannot be 100% sure.

in reply to Amy

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •
I do not, and I do not see how it is in any way misleading to say so.
in reply to Anthony

Amy
sharkey - Link to source
Amy
• •

it suggests that you need to turn them all off, that's all.

Based on … and this blog post


The blog post says you can turn them all off with browser.ml.enable.

in reply to Amy

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •
Thanks for your feedback. I am muting this thread now because it's reached the absurdum part of the ad absurdum cycle. Have a good one.
in reply to Amy

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •
I'm inclined not to trust the Reddit post of an employee of the organization doing the not-nice thing to an otherwise-nice browser, thanks, especially when it contradicts the reported experience of users of the otherwise-nice browser. It causes near-0 harm to toggle all of those configuration settings and spare oneself the risk.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Anthony

Amy
sharkey - Link to source
Amy
• •
I for one trust the employees the most! What would be the motivation of doing otherwise? I've seen the same stated multiple times. It's your choice whether to think the same, but I would add a note that a single flag is supposed to do all the work now and in the future, reducing anxiety.
in reply to Amy

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •

What would be the motivation for an employee of a large organization to enthusiastically support the mission of the organization they've chosen to work for, and that provides them their livelihood, to the point that they might overlook certain facts that are of importance to people less enthusiastic about their organization's recent behavior? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Your vigorous assertions that a single flag should turn off all the ML/AI features--including the ones in different namespaces--are unconvincing. Since it is a negligible amount of additional work for me to toggle all of them off/false/what have you, I will continue to do so.

in reply to Anthony

Simon 🐮
mastodon - Link to source
Simon 🐮
• •

Also, apparently

pdfjs.enableAltTextModelDownload
pdfjs.enableGuessAltText

(Here's how much I've gathered so far:
firesphere.dev/articles/removi… )


🔥🦊 Removing AI/Machine Learning/LLM integrations from Firefox » Firesphere.dev

How to disable AI in Firefox. And the LM features. And how to disable other AI, LLM and Machine Learning features that Firefox and Mozilla are introducing into the browser.
firesphere.dev
in reply to Anthony

Chris Siebenmann
mastodon - Link to source
Chris Siebenmann
• •

It's possible to use Firefox's 'enterprise' policy system to hard-set known preferences in a way that sticks. I've resorted to doing it for my setup, with increasingly gritted teeth. Some documentation is at mozilla.github.io/policy-templ…

I learned about it from electric.marf.space/@trysdyn/s…

policy-templates

Policy Templates for Firefox
policy-templates
in reply to Chris Siebenmann

Marcos Dione
mastodon - Link to source
Marcos Dione
• •
anything online we can steal from^W^W riff of?
in reply to Marcos Dione

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •
That link has a post where the person shares their JSON policy file. That might be a good place to start?
in reply to Chris Siebenmann

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •
This is great, thank you. A few people have suggested Betterfox and Arkenfox, which if I'm understanding correctly use a custom user.js to harden the browser. Arkenfox has a user-override.js file where you put the settings you want to stick between updates; I imagine Betterfox has something similar but I haven't looked that much into it yet. You could put these AI settings in there. I hesitate to publicly suggest such things till I've had a chance to check them out so I haven't. It's good to see there are options, though.
in reply to Anthony

Utopiah (Fabien Benetou)
glitchsoc - Link to source
Utopiah (Fabien Benetou)
• •

I didn't verify but I imagine they are hierarchical, e.g. disabled browser.ml.enable also disables everything under browser.ml.

What annoys me though is :
- why is it enabled by default?
- (arguably even worst) why preferences (the normal ones, with buttons, that most people can use) show nothing related?

Antifeatures indeed.

in reply to Utopiah (Fabien Benetou)

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •

That's the thing. It seems like that top-level option ought to disable everything, and that's what folks keep saying. However, there are new "aichat" and "aiwindow" and "smartAssist" configuration options that are also AI. Are those affected by this browser.ml.enable boolean? Maybe not--why else would they be in different namespaces? Looking forward, what stops Mozilla from adding new branches of this stuff (browser.llm.enable, browser.perplexity.ai.enable, ....) toggled on by default? Seemingly nothing stops them.

Mozilla lost my trust with behavior like this, so now I will check regularly.

in reply to Anthony

Julien W.
mastodon - Link to source
Julien W.
• •
my understanding is that the global switch is enough to disable it, and we treat that as a bug if it doesn't. Also I've been told there will be a switch in the preferences eventually.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Julien W.

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •
If you read the comments on my post you'll see several other people have said the same thing, and that I responded with skepticism (which I explained).
in reply to Anthony

Julien W.
mastodon - Link to source
Julien W.
• •
you can be skeptical, but what I said is that if this doesn't work it's handled as a bug and you can file it and it will be fixed.
in reply to Anthony

Julien W.
mastodon - Link to source
Julien W.
• •
I did, in addition I work at mozilla and I personally know the folks working on AI functionalities.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Julien W.

Anthony
snac - Link to source
Anthony
• •
⇧