Firefox AI enshitification

RussellASC · Friday at 1:02 PM

Recently updated to 14.3 with Firefox 144, and noticed a new pull down menu on selected text. It offered to send the text to an AI chatbot.

To disable, goto about:config and search for browser.ml.chat.enabled, and change it to false. May be worth it to disable everything under browser.ml.

I'm very disappointed to see this in Firefox. Perhaps there is a flag in the ports to disable completely, but I installed the pkg version.

The more you know!

MrBSD · Friday at 1:45 PM

RussellASC said:
Recently updated to 14.3 with Firefox 144, and noticed a new pull down menu on selected text. It offered to send the text to an AI chatbot.

To disable, goto about:config and search for browser.ml.chat.enabled, and change it to false. May be worth it to disable everything under browser.ml.

I'm very disappointed to see this in Firefox. Perhaps there is a flag in the ports to disable completely, but I installed the pkg version.

The more you know!

Use Librewolf. The setting you shared is set to false by default and all Firefox hardening is applied out of the box.

RussellASC · Friday at 1:52 PM

MrBSD said:
Use Librewolf. The setting you shared is set to false by default and all Firefox hardening is applied out of the box.

An excellent suggestion.

Does LW support ublock?

What about websockets? I turn those off must must enable sometimes when I'm using some services.

MrBSD · Friday at 2:24 PM

RussellASC said:
Does LW support ublock?

It comes preinstalled. It supports everything that Firefox does.

RussellASC said:
What about websockets? I turn those off must must enable sometimes when I'm using some services.

Librewolf is just less shitty version of Firefox.

scottro · Friday at 4:31 PM

I've found (from web searching, so no guarantee that it's correct), that the following should be set to false. Not all of them are by default, even in Librewolf.


    browser.ml.enable
    browser.ml.chat.enabled
    browser.ml.chat.page
    browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled
    browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled
    browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled
    extensions.ml.enabled
    sidebar.notification.badge.aichat

In Firefox, Librewolf, and Waterfox, at least some were set to true by default It wasn't as bad (IMO, as I don't like ai being included by default), as Ubuntu's firefox, where they were all set to true by default.

Perceval · Sunday at 4:56 PM

Can't say more than @scrotto said.
Sadly Librewolf does not block everything needed - my user.js (on Librewolf) has the insane amount of 500 LINES of blocked crap. And I missed the sidebar.notification

The related stuff I have against this nAIghtmare :

Code:

user_pref("browser.ml.enable", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.menu", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.page", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.shortcuts", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.shortcuts.custom", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.sidebar", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.checkForMemory", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.linkPreview.shift", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled", false);
user_pref("extensions.ml.enabled", false);

sko · Monday at 8:43 AM

if only librewolf was be based on ESR so it won't get hit by each new and mostly untested crap they come up with...

MrBSD · Monday at 8:58 AM

sko said:
if only librewolf was be based on ESR so it won't get hit by each new and mostly untested crap they come up with...

Install Firefox ESR, and just copy JSON files from Librewolf to your Firefox active profile.

sko · Monday at 9:03 AM

MrBSD said:
Install Firefox ESR, and just copy JSON files from Librewolf to your Firefox active profile.

I'll give that a try.

But doesn't librewolf actually remove/disable code? Is it just a collection of settings?

MrBSD · Monday at 9:35 AM

They do, but if you want ESR piece of mind, this is the way to go. Otherwise, just use Librewolf. Too bad Floorp isnt available on FreeBSD. Thats what i used back in my Linux days.

Perceval · Tuesday at 8:25 AM

Well, we just need a Gecko browser then...? Firefox without Firefox...

MrBSD · Tuesday at 9:13 AM

Perceval said:
Well, we just need a Gecko browser then...? Firefox without Firefox...

Im waiting for Ladybird.

Perceval · Tuesday at 11:55 AM

MrBSD said:
Im waiting for Ladybird.

Mmmh... Didn't know the project, seems obscure and sponsor list isn't clean to me...

sko · Tuesday at 12:19 PM

MrBSD said:
Im waiting for Ladybird.

Sounds promising. I especially like the fact that its under BSD license and they even have build instructions for FreeBSD, so it's (hopefully) not only an afterthought where a lot of patching and chicken-waving is required...

MrBSD · Tuesday at 12:42 PM

Perceval said:
Mmmh... Didn't know the project, seems obscure and sponsor list isn't clean to me...

You should read more about it before jumping to conclusion(s).

sko said:
Sounds promising. I especially like the fact that its under BSD license and they even have build instructions for FreeBSD, so it's (hopefully) not only an afterthought where a lot of patching and chicken-waving is required...

Its a truly independent web browser written from scratch. It has a long way to go, but it is going to be worth it. Andreas Kling, the main developer behind it, has a youtube channel that provides monthly updates on the progress and testing. Great guy btw.

Micski · Tuesday at 1:10 PM

To what extent does a default install of Firefox use AI? Are data sent to AI, despite users not activily and clearly engaging with AI features?

Espionage724 · Tuesday at 2:46 PM

micski said:
To what extent does a default install of Firefox use AI?

I was browsing my wiki and Firefox non-ESR randomly threw a non-integrated larger-font pop-up mid-page saying it could simplify it with AI with a 15 mins summary or something; I don't think I need my own notes translated to something else

But I'm almost curious if there's a header or something that could be set to tell browsers not to do that; I don't want my stuff altered on-presentation.

kent_dorfman766 · Tuesday at 2:54 PM

given the corporate direction that browsers are going, I decided that when I have time (assuming I ever do have time) I'm going to download and do a clean room build of chromium, disabling anything in it that I feel facilitates data-mining.

One big one that most people are unaware of is that browsers no longer wait until you hit <ENTER> when you put in a URL or search term, as they are sending individual keystrokes to google/amazon/etc as you type. I also want the option to disable all the on-init loading of javascript infomatics that happens when you start the browser, even before you go to any site.

Micski · Tuesday at 3:01 PM

Espionage724 said:
I was browsing my wiki and Firefox non-ESR randomly threw a non-integrated larger-font pop-up mid-page saying it could simplify it with AI with a 15 mins summary or something; I don't think I need my own notes translated to something else

But I'm almost curious if there's a header or something that could be set to tell browsers not to do that; I don't want my stuff altered on-presentation.

I have not experienced that yet (non-ESR built with Poudriere). Sounds like classic AI dumbness. I looked into the port, but I found no mentions of AI nor LLM in options nor depencies. It sounds like such AI feature code must have been sneaked in.

MrBSD · Tuesday at 3:03 PM

I use wireshark to inspect all network traffic and then block everything with my firewall.

Espionage724 · Tuesday at 3:10 PM

micski said:
I have not experienced that yet (non-ESR built with Poudriere).

Fresh profile with Firefox 145 pkg

sko · 2025-11-13T07:13:06+0000

kent_dorfman766 said:
given the corporate direction that browsers are going, I decided that when I have time (assuming I ever do have time) I'm going to download and do a clean room build of chromium, disabling anything in it that I feel facilitates data-mining.

use www/ungoogled-chromium to get rid of all the google-BS and data-mining in the first place

kent_dorfman766 said:
One big one that most people are unaware of is that browsers no longer wait until you hit <ENTER> when you put in a URL or search term, as they are sending individual keystrokes to google/amazon/etc as you type. I also want the option to disable all the on-init loading of javascript infomatics that happens when you start the browser, even before you go to any site.

To tackle the first one, on firefox you should always disable searching in the address bar (it's an ADDRES-bar FFS...) and use the search field; although those morons at mozilla make switching back to this simple, intuitive and CORRECT configuration harder and harder..) and set the config option. To kill that unwanted behavior of sending every keystroke to search engines, nowadays you have to set 'keyword.enabeld' to false (which was a simple, easily reachable option at one day - again: morons...)
For javascript-blocking there's the noscript plugin - IMHO you can't browse the web nowadays without it...
Firefox was once a user-centric browser for power-users; now it seems they have driven out every sane, real programmer of the project and the "designers" that are left try everything to enshitify everything under the cloak of the stupid and invalid argument of "the dumbest users are overwhelmed/confused by XY". If we always take the bumbest possible user as the reference, we should just destroy every piece of electronic kit...