Yes, exactly.

Closed source Chromium sounds like fun.

Ooops, I posted a reply to someone earlier and got it right (and forgot this one). Thanks for the heads up (fixed now)!

Interestingly, I just interviewed the Waterfox developer, who actually references Oblivious HTTP and his interest in developing this into a paid feature for Waterfox.

I added a section to my post with some additional comment.

I began thinking of privacy because Mozilla was clearly thinking of it when designing this feature, but I don’t think they really thought it through.

People’s browsers are visiting pages that they never intended to. If a random extension did that, you would say that it was violating your privacy. The browser does it, and you get people defending it as “optional”. Yes, but the user never installed the malware extension that is leaking your privacy. It is your browser doing it in an automated update.

If you don’t think this is a privacy issue, why doesn’t the next version of Firefox just visit every page on every page that I visit, so that when I hover over a link, I can get a link preview immediately, without needing to wait. That would save me some real time and effort!

As opposed to the case where you don’t have a link preview, and you click on a website to see what it contains, and they get your IP. The author seems to think Mozilla should have protected our privacy by having someone act as the proxy for the request. Because involving a thirds party that receives all these requests and does work for us for free is absolutely how we protect our privacy.

But that is exactly what Mozilla is telling us – trust us.

Why was the feature added if my browser is going to browse to the page anyway? What is the value add? I was looking for some way for it to make sense - ah right, it could be a privacy preserving feature - I can preview the link and verify whether I want to visit it before I actually visit it. But that isn’t how it works.

Yes, a feature clearly designed for pushing onto that juicy “people with mobility impairments” userbase.

Love that you ignore all of the people who are currently seeing the popups and not understanding why.

It transforms the contribution to no longer be “share alike”.

He’s on the train.

Explain what you mean by this?

AI Chatbots

Unlike browsers that tie you to one default assistant, Firefox lets you choose the AI chatbot you want, right in the sidebar. Keep your preferred assistant within reach, get quick answers without switching tabs, and browse the way that works best for you.

Perplexity

We integrated Perplexity as a secondary search option, offering conversational answers with citations you can trust. It’s a powerful alternative for people who want direct, verifiable information without digging through long pages of results.

Mozilla started working with the copyright pirates this year. Fantastic.

Mozilla is marketing Perplexity in Firefox.

So the real question becomes, do we want them using browsers like OpenAI’s new browser, that will likely mine everything they do for their datasets?

What is the difference?

Or do we want a browser that can limit what these AIs can scrape up, like Firefox?

Where has Mozilla shown that Firefox in any way limits what is scraped? All I see is jawboning.

We need to build alternatives that aren’t controlled by billionaires, massive corporations, and venture capitalists.

Okay. Who is doing it? Not Mozilla, clearly.

But if I have to choose between them, I’d rather back Mozilla.

Why? They are using stolen data to obviate community contributions. Your trust seems misplaced.

Do you want one company controlling all the AI out there? Controlling all the answers AI gives?

Do you really think that there won’t be multiple models even if the bubble bursts? The “best” models are from China and are open source. “We” don’t control China at all! So I don’t see this as likely.

Mozilla claims they want to develop responsible AI.

Put up or shut up, right?

They say they want to make their AI private, and work on-device. I believe we should be encouraging this, so that we don’t end up with control of AI in the hands of Google, Meta, or Musk.

I had no issue with the AI features in Firefox - the tab sorter and the translations, etc.

What I DO have an issue with is Mozilla turning its users into training fodder for the AI companies - instead of just building that private AI they keep jawboning about.

Saving neither, is my feeling.

Back when Mozilla was building Firefox to save the web, Mozilla was actually producing a product that people could use that did what the big bad companies were pushing. This time around, Mozilla is just selling our eyeballs to the big bad companies while jawboning about how virtuous they are.

It’s not a couple of days, it is in place today. We need to wait until new code is developed to enable Labs for people who have telemetry or studies disabled.

Orion isn’t open source.

I talk a little about this in the post, but it feels very weird to think of the new Labs features as being open source but not being accessible unless you are giving Mozilla data – OR you are compiling your own copy of Firefox (which is also no longer Firefox).

I think it is a very weird situation, but of course I do see the ambiguity.

I’m not pushing the video, it is there for people who don’t want to read. 🤷

Sorry for wasting your two minutes.

Here’s some more analysis (also linked on the original post).

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