[ItsBob]

Maybe it's just me but why is it on by default? Why is this shit not off in the first place? Why can't Firefox just be a browser with great html, css, js rendering and then have a bunch of toggles for extra crap that people want? Do they actually have metrics that show "When we enable this crap by default we make an extra $X Million per year"? I'd put money on that being untrue. I bet it's like the data-driven ad spend - I've yet to see anything that proves that hoovering up bajillions of data points on each person moves the needle on spending beyond just showing a context-relevant ad, e.g. An ad for fishing gear on a blog post about fishing gear!

Honestly, I feel more and more every day like old-man-shaking-fist-at-clouds! Can we not just have something that works without spying, without engagement-driven shit switched on all the fucking time?

I think of the Simpsons Mr Brown meme where he's asking "Is it me that's wrong?".

I can't be the only person that thinks this way!

[Sabinus]

Because the vast majority of Firefox users aren't contrarians or diehard anti AI crusaders. These features are helpful to people. So they're on and available for people to use, and since it's a foss customisable browser, users with strong opinions can change it to their liking.

I don't think the AI features are used for advertising data harvesting but I'm happy to be educated if you have a source saying otherwise.

[sigmar]

>Maybe it's just me but why is it on by default? Why is this shit not off in the first place?

Because there would be millions of emails to support asking "why can't Firefox translate a page the same way chrome can?" from people that couldn't find the AI opt-in switch.

[hypeatei]

> Can we not just have something that works without spying, without engagement-driven shit switched on all the fucking time?

Absolutely not! Making someone opt-in (the horror!) would result in too much confusion and support tickets! We can't ignore those tickets and tell people to figure it out, we have to cave and turn all the bullshit on by default.

I think a lot of our problems can be explained by: corporations lacking a spine and people unwilling to learn about the computer they use everyday. It's basically unacceptable to not know how to change a tire if you own a car but clicking through some browser settings is too hard, I guess.

[Sabinus]

Expecting everyone to learn a lot about Firefox to turn on features they want is a lot more of a burden on the users than expecting opinionated power users to remove features they don't want.

[roywiggins]

Firefox translation is entirely offline, so is the LLM powered tab groups. Nobody is making money off Firefox Translations.

[aembleton]

Sounds like LibreWolf would suit you better: https://librewolf.net/