- cross-posted to:
- foss@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- foss@beehaw.org
TL;DR: Mozilla recently released AI controls for Firefox: a single control panel that lets people disable AI features in the browser or pick and choose which to leave on. On the surface, this sounds like a win for user choice in an era of AI-everything.
If we dig deeper, you can start to see that the kill switch isn’t the whole story. This feature acts like an accountability sink. By giving you an off-switch, Mozilla’s leadership shifts the ethical burden of AI onto the user - turning their design choices into your responsibility.
Uh, I’m not trying to be all Hail Corporate or anything, but they didn’t have to include the disable AI toggle. It sounds like if you turn it off, you never have to think about AI in Firefox…
Users needed to be able to choose if they wanted those LLM features from the very beginning, opt-in is the only sane way Mozilla could’ve handled this push towards LLM integration in Firefox. You are being “All Hail Corporate” by refusing to hold Mozilla accountable for their user hostile behavior. In this case, insane defaults and not respecting user choice is the bad behavior on the part of Mozilla. The only respectful choice would’ve been allowing the user to reject LLM features when first starting Firefox. A kill switch cannot be considered enough in this case and never should be!
Opt-in is not just the only respectful choice, it’s also the only logical or ethical one. Mozilla instead made the choice that makes the most financial sense, like every other company or nonprofit on the planet.
If you have other ideas to fund the project, see if Mozilla will listen to you. We don’t have to like it, but at this time Firefox is still the least-bad browser. But people who won’t accept anything good they do are actually unhinged…