Oh my fucking god. I just right clicked a link to an article to open it in a new tab in Firefox and saw an option to “Ask an AI Chatbot (Z).” Fucking EW. There was thankfully an option to remove it from my context menu, but oh my fucking god, AI bros are so fucking desperate to adopt this tech en masse, I swear to god.
Let the fucking bubble burst, nobody fucking likes generative-AI and making it goddamn inescapable is not going to make us like it. Let it go the way of NFT and the metaverse like it goddamn deserves. If generative-AI was genuinely that fucking good, people would naturally adopt it like we did with computers. Companies did not have to work this hard to get people to adopt computers because their purpose and value was obvious.
And @mozilla, @firefox please for the love of god, stop adding AI features. I get you’re partially funded by Google, but grow a goddamn spine and listen to your users. People do not like these features and expect better from you. Firefox is supposed to be about privacy and generative-AI is NOT good for privacy (do I even need to mention Windows Recall?) You wanna be the alternative to Google so bad, yet you do the same scummy, disliked sh!t everyone hates Google for.
Firefox isn’t really viable with it’s current user base. Mozilla is circling the drain really.
It could have been viable with the user base that they had years ago, and it probably could be viable today, but Mozilla keeps throwing away all of their goodwill so that they can keep paying absurd salaries for shitty executives.
I absolutely agree that mozilla has squandered it’s strong position from a decade ago.
… the series of “strategic” decisions that have been unsuccessful is embarrassing really.
That said, the “shitty executives” narrative is reddit edge lord stuff. Any large successful project is going to need well paid experienced executives. Of course you can judge them harshly in hindsight, but it’s naive to assume they’re making poorly informed decisions.
Like in your other comment suggesting there’s no evidence that users love chat bots - you can absolutely guarantee that mozilla has conducted some market research indicating that it’s a feature set that will attract more users.
Of course you can engage in supposition that such an assertion is incorrect, you can even predict that it will ultimately be another failure.
However, it’s hubris to suggest that your own assessment of the market is more accurate than mozilla’s - exactly the kind of hubris you’re accusing mozilla of.
That’s not true at all. There are plenty of large, successfull projects that don’t have well paid experienced executives.
I can not guarantee that at all. They have a long history of doing things to make money, at the cost of users. I don’t see why this has to be any different.
That’s not what I’m accusing them of at all. What I’m accusing them of is having mis-aligned goals.
My goal would be to have useful, free software that gives agency and power to it’s users.
Mozilla’s goal is to give their executives a lot of money, by pretending to give a shit about their users, while openly selling them out.