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
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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
Anthony
in reply to 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.aichatEnter "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
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Paul
in reply to Anthony • • •Anthony
in reply to Paul • • •I'm not going to poke through a settings panel and hope. I want all these settings permanently off. I don't want the settings to be reverted after upgrade, which some reports suggest is happening. I don't want new configuration options that I'm opted into by default to pop up without my knowing.
Right now watching
about:configis the only viable way to satisfy those requirements."Much safer"? AI/LLMs are not safe. I'll make safety judgments for myself, thanks. "Much easier"? I'll be the judge of that, thanks.
A strange reply, I have to say--it's unclear what your motivations are for posting this.
Paul
in reply to Anthony • • •Saving you and others from having to poke around in about:config and risking data loss and damaging your own Fx setup was the aim.
The settings screen is much easier to navigate and safer to use for most people and with good reason it does not have the same warning screen as about:config.
Anthony
in reply to Paul • • •And you believe I don't know this because.........?
Check that savior complex talk please.
firebreathingduck
in reply to Anthony • • •I'm intensely curious what percentage of Firefox users are tech-savvy enough to use Firefox in 2025 but excited to use AI? I would think it's less than half.
"You know all of that unethical, privacy-invasive, environmentally damaging, frequently inaccurate technology you refuse to use? Well, have I got good news for you!"
What's next, built in NFTs?
Anthony
in reply to firebreathingduck • • •I am curious as well.
Mozilla's new CEO is all-in on AI, though, regardless of what its users want: lwn.net/Articles/1050826/
He says the word "trust" a whole bunch of times yet intends to turn an otherwise nice web browser into a slop-slinging platform. I don't expect this will work out very well for anyone.
Mozilla gets a new CEO: Anthony Enzor-DeMeo
LWN.netAnthony
in reply to Anthony • • •I've now had at least four people, two of whom self-identified as Mozilla employees, claim that the above list of AI features--which were suddenly and rapidly added over the last few releases of Firefox, and were "on" (true) by default--could easily be turned off by flipping one master kill switch. This is not true, but folks keep claiming it or suggesting it anyway.
Here's a post from an official Firefox Mastodon account suggesting such a master kill switch does not exist yet, but will be added in a future release:
mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdev…
That's not as bad as it could be. It's bad they're stuffing AI into a perfectly good web browser for no apparent reason other than vibes or desperation. It's very bad if it's on by default; their dissembling post about it aside, opt-in has a reasonably clear meaning here: if there's a kill switch, then that kill switch should be off by default. But at least there will be a kill switch.
... show moreI've now had at least four people, two of whom self-identified as Mozilla employees, claim that the above list of AI features--which were suddenly and rapidly added over the last few releases of Firefox, and were "on" (true) by default--could easily be turned off by flipping one master kill switch. This is not true, but folks keep claiming it or suggesting it anyway.
Here's a post from an official Firefox Mastodon account suggesting such a master kill switch does not exist yet, but will be added in a future release:
mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevβ¦
That's not as bad as it could be. It's bad they're stuffing AI into a perfectly good web browser for no apparent reason other than vibes or desperation. It's very bad if it's on by default; their dissembling post about it aside, opt-in has a reasonably clear meaning here: if there's a kill switch, then that kill switch should be off by default. But at least there will be a kill switch.
In any case, please stop responding to my post saying there's a master kill switch for Firefox's AI slop features. From the horse's mouth, and from user experience, there is not yet.
Furthermore, when there is a master kill switch, we don't know whether flipping it will maintain previous state of all the features it controls. In other words it's possible they'll have the master kill switch turn on all AI features when the switch is flipped to "on" or "true", rather than leaving them in whatever state you'd set them to previously. Perhaps you decide to turn the kill switch on because there are a handful of features you're comfortable with and you want to try them; will doing so mean that now all the AI features are on? We won't know till it's released and people try this. So, in the meantime, it's still good practice to keep an eye on all these configuration options if you want the AI off.
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #web #tech #dev #Firefox #Mozilla #AISlop #NoAI #NoLLMs #NoAIBrowsers
Firefox for Web Developers
2025-12-18 12:11:21
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P.J. Meisch
in reply to Anthony • • •Sensitive content
Anthony
in reply to P.J. Meisch • • •It's a good question, and I have to confess that I did not check as thoroughly as I should have before posting. Here's what I just found:
That account is run by Jake Archibald, who joined Mozilla in August working on Firefox. The kill switch coming in an upcoming release is confirmed here: 9to5linux.com/firefox-will-shiβ¦
as well as by the new Mozilla CEO on reddit here: reddit.com/user/anthony-firefoβ¦
If this is being faked then whoever's doing it sure is going to a lot of trouble.
Firefox Will Ship with an "AI Kill Switch" to Completely Disable all AI Features - 9to5Linux
Marcus Nestor (9to5Linux)Chris Siebenmann
in reply to Anthony • • •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-templβ¦
I learned about it from electric.marf.space/@trysdyn/sβ¦
Electric Gremlin
2025-03-01 00:16:50
Anthony
in reply to Chris Siebenmann • • •user.jsto harden the browser. Arkenfox has auser-override.jsfile 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.Ellie π΄π³οΈββ§οΈ
in reply to Anthony • • •these solutions all have the problem that mozilla likes to replace those about config settings with settings that are the exact same but are named differently. So either the project you're using, like arkenfox, not only agrees with your choices and uses them as default, but also reliably provides updates to reflect Mozilla's changes, or you'll have to keep track of that and there is no warning whatsoever from Firefox when one of the settings you applied suddenly no longer exists after an update, you'll probably only notice it when Firefox misbehaves.
For example, arkenfox by default deletes all history and closes all tabs when you quit Firefox, so in my override file I changed that back to the Firefox default behaviour, only for mozilla to change the names of those settings and then when I updated arkenfox, it applied its defaults to those new settings and suddenly, the next time I reopened my Firefox, everything was gone. That was real fun. Luckily I had a backup.
Anthony
in reply to Ellie π΄π³οΈββ§οΈ • • •Amy
in reply to Anthony • • •browser.ml.enable! This gives the impression you need to disable all of these and be on the lookout for more, which is misleading.Anthony
in reply to Amy • • •Chris Siebenmann
in reply to Amy • • •I have personal experience that setting browser.ml.enable to false does not stop (all) new ML features from appearing, such as browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled (which definitely was active, its appearance in the context menu was how I discovered it).
If it is the intention of Firefox developers that this work, then they have some debugging and bug fixing to do.
Anthony
in reply to Chris Siebenmann • • •That is correct. And, if you're actually read the whole thread, you'd see there are configuration options outside of the
browser.mltree that wouldn't--and shouldn't, because of their names--be affected by the settingbrowser.ml.enable. And and, none of this guarantees that the next version of Firefox won't have 20 more LLM features enabled by default.My impression, after following this saga for a bit, is that Mozilla really really wants LLM features in Firefox and turned on for as many users as possible, irrespective of what their userbase expresses. I think the discussions around
browser.ml.enableare about spreading FUD and distracting away from the real issue, which is that the Firefox project is going a direction directly counter to what the majority of Firefox users state that they want (and don't want).Anthony
in reply to Chris Siebenmann • • •That is correct. And, if you'd actually read the whole thread, you'd see there are configuration options outside of the
browser.mltree that wouldn't--and shouldn't, because of their names--be affected by the settingbrowser.ml.enable. And and, none of this guarantees that the next version of Firefox won't have 20 more LLM features enabled by default.My impression, after following this saga for a bit, is that Mozilla really really wants LLM features in Firefox and turned on for as many users as possible, irrespective of what their userbase expresses. I think the discussions around
browser.ml.enableare about spreading FUD and distracting away from the real issue, which is that the Firefox project is going a direction directly counter to what the majority of Firefox users state that they want (and don't want).Amy
in reply to Amy • • •Anthony
in reply to Amy • • •Because they do turn back on automatically after updates. You can observe this yourself. It stinks, and I think Mozilla's leadership is poor on this, but that's how it is.