Mozilla announces more AI in Firefox, still failing to understand that at this point their market share is made of tech savvy people who do not want that.
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Mozilla announces more AI in Firefox, still failing to understand that at this point their market share is made of tech savvy people who do not want that.
Mozilla, please. Stop chasing the fads. Get your own values.
People use Firefox to get access to an open web, use a sturdy browser, and not to be tracked. Build in that direction and that direction only.
Nobody from your current user base will recommend Firefox with AI to their friends.
Introducing AI, the Firefox way: A look at what we're working on and how you can help shape it | The Mozilla Blog
AI Window is a user-controlled space we’re building in Firefox that lets you chat with an AI assistant and get help while you browse.
(blog.mozilla.org)
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I wanted to write a more nuanced follow up but @anildash already wrote it. I’d recommend everyone who boosted this to have a read.
The TLDR for me is
- Numbers say people do want AI
- Mozilla has a role to play in educating people about AI, to protect their privacy
- Mozilla is terrible at announcing such features, and seems to lack coordination overall
I know you don’t want them to want AI, but… - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
(www.anildash.com)
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@thibaultamartin I strongly suspect @anildash's piece is plagued by incurable optimism.
Re your TLDR:
* has Mozilla polled *their own users* to see what they think of AI? Not the ones they dream of capturing with these features, the ones that *actually* use it, and that they're currently bleeding left and right with their inane initiatives;
1/n
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* Mozilla is not in the position to educate anyone about AI and privacy, not only because nobody uses their browser (2% market share and going *down*), but because their take on the whole business is incoherently schizophrenic *at best*;
2/n
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* and the issue isn't that Mozilla fails at communication, it's that they're trying to put lipstick on a pig, and everybody can see that it's still a pig; they're following a trend of the moment that goes *clearly* against anything they *supposedly* stand (or used to stand) for, and trying to give it a poorly-applied varnish of pretend-ethics that scrapes before it's even touched;
they alienated their whole volunteer JPN l10n team, ffs: https://linuxiac.com/ai-controversy-forces-end-of-mozilla-japanese-sumo-community/
3/n
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@thibaultamartin the
* their entire modus operanding in the last few years (at least) has been, outside of a couple of “performative” actions that died out as late as they were given lip service (see e.g. the short-lived history of mozilla.social), a consistent and constant betrayal of their core values, both within and outside of browser development;
4/n
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The fact that a proprietary browser on a string budget like Vivaldi does a better job at representing the users' interests against GAFAM *despite using Google's rendering engine* says everything that needs to be said about Mozilla.
5/n
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G gustavinobevilacqua@mastodon.cisti.org shared this topic
